The Daisy Genocide
by 2degreesabovefreezing
Summary: My name is Lovino Vargas but that's not who I actually am. I'm my brother. They put his DNA into a little ball of jello and grew me like a house plant. To say it blatantly, I'm a clone and I'm in a disturbing amount of trouble. I'm about to tell the story of my fight to preserve my humanity followed by a vicious history of crime but it's a secret. Nobody has to know.
1. The Flowers Were Screaming

The Daisy Genocide

_The Flowers Were Screaming_

My name is Lovino Vargas but that is not who I am. I am my brother. They put his DNA into a little ball of jello and grew me like a house plant.

You might have heard the term _Pushing Daisies. _If not, it means that you're dead in the ground, a lump of fertilizer that's being used to push up daisies. Well, those daisies symbolize death and are a very fragile thing to mess with. They have a very delicate balance. A long time ago, the daisies started screaming. We all heard them, some more blaringly than others, but we all ignored it until it finally dissipated into a funny little qualm that once dared to face man kind.

Death is dead. Man killed it. Now, it is us who control life. We create, we destroy, we incubate our surroundings to fit our desires. That's why I'm alive. You see, my brother is dead; taken in a terrible accident. Of course, that was no big deal back then. They just scooped up his body, took some blood, and made me. A perfect match. Just like that, they resurrected Feliciano. Only, I'm not Feliciano. I'm smarter. I was made that way. Feliciano was always the school dunce. My parents thought that this time, they could do a little better. I'm also taller and stronger than him and I look more like my grandpa. These were requests made by my parents.

The word clone is unethical. We don't say that. We call them a Pomaig. That's pronounced (Poe-my-g). It's an acronym for Person Of Modified And Inherited Genetics. When you say clone, you think of a robot army. That's not what it is. This is the ARK Era, as in The ARK corporation. They've frozen away countless test-tubes of DNA, making sure, like Noah, that nothing will completely die off. There's shelves of monkeys and horses and even people. It's hard to imagine. Countless people waiting in test tubes, waiting to be brought into a world that wasn't made for them.

Of course, it's not just Pomaigs. When a mommy and daddy love each other very much, they make a "natural". Back when ARK was new, most everyone was a natural. Only problem is, naturals aren't as perfect as Pomaigs are. Now, Naturals are rare. They're lower class people. A lot of them live on reservations, forest-like lands where they can run free like gypsies. The ones who live in the real world are often charity people or maintenance workers.

Then there are the Politia. They're different from the police. The police protect the people and the politia protect the system. They don't have to follow any of the rules. As long as they get the results, they won't be questioned as to how they got them. They watch, they monitor, they make sure everything works and that everyone does what they're supposed to do.

There's one last group. When you're cloning, every once in a while a batch comes out screwy. But it's all right. ARK will refund your money or try again if you like. What happens to the mistake though? It's unethical to kill it so it becomes an employee of the public. It takes on the lowest of jobs, the ones that real people have rejected. These people are referred to simply as the Curvus denomination. They're not right, to say it bluntly. They don't work right and for that reason, they have to be kept out of society. My mother said that they were going to make me a Curvus because that tell-tale cowlick turned up on the wrong side of my head but my parents let it be. They even gave me my own name. Well, actually, it was my grandfather who named me. He took one look at his Petri-dish grandchild and gave me the name Lovino, meaning "I ruin" in Italian. My father just said that the combination of Feli's death and science made Grandpa grumpy.

My bones ache knowing that they were meant for someone else. I'm living on borrowed time with borrowed blood and a borrowed face. I've always known that I'm not my brother and I've always wished that no one expected me to be but it took me a while to actually consider running away. Now, it's the only thing I want.

No, that's a lie. I also want to be dead but that's never going to happen. I could jump off a cliff and smash into a hundred little pieces. Doctors are used to cases like that, people do it all the time. They do their magic and just like that, you're good as new. I could make it really interesting. I could have someone chop off my head and burn my body. I would probably make the news. Suddenly, there would be this race to resurrect the poor murdered boy. They'd scrape my DNA off the charcoal and build a new Lovino, smarter and stronger than the last. Nobody dies, nobody escapes.

It's all thanks to ARK, our freezer warehouse where every species imaginable can be condensed into a Tuna can. People _used_ to say, "If we keep killing everything, soon we'll be the only ones left on the planet" but now we say, "Just make another. I don't see what the problem is". You can't break ARK, it's not possible. All you can do is run away from it. That's exactly what I plan to do.

I woke up at six o'clock sharp. Every morning, everyday. I brush my teeth, wash my face and comb my hair, in that order, every morning, every day. Everything is perfect, everything has a pattern. That's the way we do it my house. Nothing out of the ordinary happens so we're prepared for everything.

When I look in the mirror, my eyes are always drawn to that quirky little cowlick. My genetic identical had one just like it. It was just a freak of nature happening but naturally, it had to be reproduced when I was created. Stop looking in the mirror. You should only look in the mirror for five minutes. It wasn't a rule but it was strongly advised. Any less and you won't evaluate yourself thoroughly enough, any more and you'll become obsessed with appearance.

Next, I get dressed. There's no dress code or uniform but it's understood in our society that you shouldn't stand out from everyone else. Boys wore button up shirts and slacks. It was summer, so I wore the short sleeve top. In winter, I'll wear the long sleeve one. That's how it is. There aren't written rules because most of them are upheld by the people. At six thirty sharp, we meet downstairs.

"Lovino, sweetie, how did you sleep? Well, I presume? I'm sure you did, of course you did, you've always been a good sleeper." Said the woman. She was my mother. I find it hard to be around her more and more each day. I've become so intolerant of her stupid oblivion. She is the product of careful propaganda, just like we all are. It breaks my heart. We don't know each other, nobody does. We just converse through pre-determined script and go our own ways. To each other, we are mother and son. We don't have faces, just roles to fulfill. She's all but a shell, sitting in her lonely chair, reading her lonely papers and thinking her lonely thoughts.

"Yes, well." I answered, feeling inclined to respond.

"That's good. The news was on just earlier, did you know that?"

"I did." It comes on at the same time each day, everyday.

"There was a commotion on the reservation. Some kids having a cult of a sort. Demon worship."

"What's happened to them?"

"The politia took care of it."

"How?"

She looked at me like I were crazy. Everybody knew that when the politia took care of something, that was that. No questions asked. She ignored me. "Are you going to study today? You are, of course. It's Tuesday, you always study of Tuesdays. Of course you're going to study today." I just nodded. "What will you study? Nerve cells, right? Of course, you're studying nerve cells now."

"Yes, I am. I going to leave now." I informed her.

"You usually don't leave until seven. What's the occasion?" I opened my mouth but needed not speak. "You want to get there before it gets warm, don't you? Yes, of course. You do that some days. That's what it is, that's why you want to leave early. Alright, good bye, Dear." I said goodbye as well and left.

I wasn't going to study. I was going to the reservation to read. I had a book hidden out there that I had been working on for a few weeks. They say that we should limit the amount of fiction we read. It's not real. It's make-believe people in make-believe worlds having make-believe problems. Reading books like that gives people crazy ideas. They make people argue and when people argue, there is chaos. They tell us to read more informational text. It teaches our brains to think logically and then we can end all chaos and mayhem. In short, fiction endangers lives and non fiction saves them. At least, that's what we're taught.

When I was seven years of age, I picked up my first book without an ARK approved seal on it. I liked it. It made me imagine worlds that were far beyond my own. I met people of all different kinds and I thought about things that were fantastically out of proportion. For instance, I thought to myself once, "What if a cow had six legs instead of four?" Can you imagine!? The pure absurdity of it! I loved it!

I started to read a lot after then. I read old books that told about a world before ARK. In school, they told us about the age of nuclear war and genocide but they forgot to mention everything amazing about it! There used to be real live people on the TV and everybody ate food all the time! Three meals _a day_! Can you imagine!? Nowadays, we don't eat food. They say that food is an unnecessary pleasure, much like drugs and alcohol. It corrupts us and drives us to insanity. Hunger keeps us from focusing on things that are actually meaningful so instead, we take a pill every Saturday evening. I've heard that some of the naturals eat big things like fruits and vegetables but they're not allowed to bring them into the city. Once you've eaten something, you're addicted. Still…I want to have chocolate someday…just to taste for a minute.

I hid this book on the reservation, under a pile of leaves at the trunk of a tree that had been split by lightening. I wasn't sure what the name of it was because the binding was old and torn. On the first page, it read, "To my Dearest Amelia, whom has taught me all I know about love." I named the book Amelia. It was a fantastic thing. It was about a man named Arnold who worked in a mine so that he and his daughter could take the train into a big city. It was hard for me to understand a lot of the references. They talked about railroads and airplanes and banquets, things I only knew from the pages of a book. This is how I learned about the old world. Everybody was natural and they all knew each other. There weren't schedules. People used to get in debates or sit down just to talk. Sometimes, I would close my eyes and pretend like I was in that room too. I would pretend like I knew the names of the famous actors and we'd discus a film for the whole night.

That's why I started going to the reservation. The forests were quiet and no one would watch you. In the city, there are always eyes. Everything you do and say can be observed though glowing red laser points. You can't trust the city.

Half an hour into my reading, I heard footsteps in the crumpled leaves. I quickly buried my book beside me and waited casually as if I hadn't been doing anything at all, just a pomaig minding his own business in the middle of a reservation. There's nothing suspicious about that other than the fact of social class segregation.

It was a boy. He was tall…at least taller than me and I can't say that I wasn't a little bit shocked by the sight of him. He had warm, autumn, skin and thick locks of dirt-colored hair. His eyes were green like the hanging leaves of great olive trees, they darted into mine, looking at me with divine curiosity. I couldn't figure him. Usually, when you meet a stranger, you know exactly what they want but this boy was neutral. He didn't seem to be up to anything at all. "Hello." His happy voice chimed.

I said hello as well, which is what you ought to say when someone says hello to you. He asked me for my name but I told him that I couldn't give it to him because I didn't know what he wanted to do with it. "I only want to listen to it." He assured me. "I know your face but if I can't put a name to it, it's like we never met at all."

"Well, just run back to what you were doing and there won't be a need for this at all."'

"But what if I want to talk with you?"

"Talk? About what?"

"About anything. Suppose we were to talk about fish. Would you like that?"

"People don't talk about such meaningless things."

"Fish aren't meaningless! We eat them after all, don't we?"

I was intrigued. "You eat?"

He laughed. "Of course I eat. How do you suppose I live?"

"You must be a natural then."

"I am. You must live in the city."

"I do."

"Why are you on the reservation? I didn't think that was allowed." My face instantly became flushed, cueing him in on the fact that I had something to hide. "Are you running away?" His curiosity impelled him to come around beside me and plop down into the masses of dry leaves.

"What business have you in questioning me!?"

"Come on! I want to know! What's your secret?"

"I haven't got one."

"A pomaig doesn't end up hiding on a reservation without a secret to tell."

I turned my head away from him, feeling rather frustrated with this stranger. I didn't know him for more than a minute yet he was breaking every code of barriers. I wanted him to leave.

"Oh! I've made you upset! I'm sorry!"

"I'm not upset."

"You're upset with me! Say you forgive me, please!"

"Shut up." I mumbled under my breath, earning a moment of shock from both of us. Nobody talks like that. Nobody argues and nobody practices name-calling, not ever. Surprisingly, when I looked back at the natural, his lips were smiling over his entire face.

" You're absolutely mad~" He commented, the smile not wavering. "I like you quite a bit. More than I like most strangers. You must tell me your name now. It's practically torture to keep it away from me."

"I can't tell you my name because-"

"Is it Leo? You look like a Leo."

"What?"

"Or maybe Lucas. I'm feeling the letter L. Suppose it's Luca, is that any better? No, not Luca…"

"What are you-"

"I've got it! Maybe you're a Liam! No…that's not right…What if you're a-"

"Lovino." He was so annoying. Definitely a natural.

"Lovino? That's your name?"

I nodded.

"It's great! Better than the ones I guessed. It suits you! It-"

"It means _I ruin_."

"It doesn't suit you at all."

"You don't know me. You can't know what suits me or not."

"I have a talent for judging people."

"I'm sure there are lots of other people waiting to be judged. Run off. Judge them before they loose patience."

"None quite as interesting as you. I still haven't discovered your secret."

"And what is your intent? If you must know my secret, what will you do with it?"

"Just listen. Maybe it'll become my secret as well."

"That's ridiculous."

"Is it? Isn't it much more fun to share a secret between two or three people?"

"Then it's not a secret."

"It is if nobody tells."

"Go make a secret with somebody else. It would be far easier for you to understand than my secret."

"Why is that?"

"Because you're a natural. Even if I tried to explain these things to you, you wouldn't understand. Like, for instance, do you know why it doesn't rain in the city?"

"No."

"See? And that's only because your brain hasn't got the capacity for a thing like that."

"Well, why _doesn't_ it rain in the city?"

"It's very complicated. I couldn't possibly tell you."

"You could try."

"I'm warning you, you wouldn't understand."

"Come on now." He whined. "Give it a whirl, I might get it."

I sighed. It's useless. Naturals don't even understand that they can't understand. "It's a series of wires running from building to building that-"

"Well I know _that_. But why do people in the city not want to get rained on?"

"That's an odd question. Well…it's because… well they don't want all the electronics to break."

"They're all water proof. They fixed that problem before the rain-less roof was ever invented."

I tried to think of a solution but I didn't have one. Why can't it rain in the city? I didn't have an answer so I settled for, "You think too much." People sometimes told me that when we sat down to talk.

"Do I? I've been told I'm crazy before so I must be. I love the rain. Almost as much as I love the sun. I like to be rained on, have you ever been rained on?"

"I don't think I'd like it."

"Have you ever tried?"

"No."

"I have a hose in my backyard if you'd like to give it a shot."

"No, I'd like to go back to what I was doing before."

"The secret?"

"Yes."

"Go ahead."

"It won't be a secret unless you leave."

"I won't tell! I just want to know what it is that keeps my friend Lovino so intrigued." I was surprised by the boy's language. He spoke like a person from the city. Naturals are usually all slang users.

"You could get me in real trouble if you told!"

"I won't! Tell me! I so rarely get to hear a good secret."

"Maybe it's because you can't be trusted with them."

He groaned and flopped over into the leaves with exhaustion.

"Don't the leaves make you itch?"

"I suppose."

"They why do you lay in them?"

"I like it. Have you ever tried laying in the leaves?"

"No."

"Try."

So I did. At first, all I thought about was how much they itched and scratched at my skin. He told me to relax and not move so much. Suddenly, I realized the fantasy of the whole thing. I felt like a leaf myself, small and lost in the abyss of my caramel-colored brothers. I could feel the wind move across my belly as if coaxing me to stay low on the Earth like this and a divine scent rose all around me. For a long time, the only noise came from the whistling leaves and our breaths as they intertwined. "What's your name?" I asked the boy.

"Antonio." He answered softly.

"Antonio…can you tell me something?"

"What?"

"What do the leave smell like?" I was so blind in the ways of the world. It wasn't the smell I wanted to know so much as the feeling of it. What do call it when you feel like you could melt right into the ground? What do you call this odd sensation? It was so soothing yet it made my heart race.

He took a deep breath. "They smell like maple syrup… and sugar… and the end of a campfire."

I didn't know any of those smells. "What do they feel like?"

"Like being happy."

Just then, I felt like I hadn't ever been happy before. How odd. I was sure I had been happy before but the more I thought about it, the less I was able to pinpoint an actual moment other then right now. I'd been happy before, it's ridiculous to think I hadn't. Of course I've been happy before! Only… I'm too distracted to think of another time. "Antonio…"

"What?"

"It's…Nothing." I wanted to ask him everything. I wanted him to tell me what the sky looked like or what kind of pictures there were in the moon. I wanted him to describe the feeling of a cold breeze on your neck and grass in between your toes or maybe someday, how chocolate tastes. Stupid questions. He knew all of these things and his senses had developed in such a way that they were natural to him. He could feel a tree trunk and describe all of these wonderful sensations that I would have never noticed. I reached my hand down beside me and pulled out the worn stack of parchment.

He looked at it curiously. "What's it about?"

"A man and his daughter. They don't have any money so the man must work in the mines so they can take the railroad into a city."

"It's fiction?"

I nodded and opened the book, a daring task that I had grown used to. I glanced through the words. He told me to read what I was looking at. I asked him why but he retorted that it killed him that I knew the secret and he didn't. "Lacey hadn't had a good night's sleep in over a year. She couldn't, not while the truth weighted so heavily on her mind. She thought about her father and the mines and the dangerous growling of the caves but mostly, she reminded herself that she were alive and that while this was true, she wanted to _feel_ alive." I recited from a yellow leaf of water-damaged paper. I followed it by clarifying that Lacey was Colonel, the protagonist's, daughter.

"Is that why you're hiding in the woods?"

I nodded again.

"How does it end?"

"What do you mean?"

"The book."

"I'm not in the business of book murder. Someone put a great deal of effort into writing this and to spoil it in a sentence or two would be considered murder of the first degree."

He chuckled a warm, comforting, chuckle. "You weren't made for the city."

"Yes I was. I'm a pomaig."

"You're still a person. You're just as much a person as I am, you just started differently." I looked into his eyes and found myself there, suspended in two dark drown pupils. My face watched me right back, just as surprised and unsure as I was. "But you're different. I've never met a person like you, , not even a natural. Will you come back tomorrow?"

"Back here?"

"Yes."

"I don't know. If I do this too often, people will find out."

"If you come back, I'll take you to see the abandoned train tracks."

"Where!?"

"A mile or two East."

"I can't be gone that long."

"I have a bike, it'll only take a minute."

I thought about this preposition. "What happens if you follow the tracks?"

"You leave." He said.

We were both silent, possibly thinking the same thing. I had no way of knowing what he was thinking but the way he was silent suggested that he wanted to ask me the same thing I wanted to ask. He was the first to say it. "Have you ever thought of leaving?"

"I have. You?"

He sat up and I followed his lead. "Yes… I don't know why but I feel like something very terrible is going to happen. This place is going to collapse in on itself, it can't stay like this forever."

"Where would you go?" I asked that question not to him but to myself, hoping that he might be able to produce an answer for me which I had failed to do every time I wondered it.

"Away, I suppose. Somewhere where nobody will discover me. Where I may die and stay dead forever."

"Why don't you do it then?"

"Can you imagine being alone for the rest of your life? It's possibly more heartbreaking than this reality."

"I suppose. Maybe it wouldn't be too awful. People are always telling you what to do and getting angry with you."

"Yes but you would miss them if you left."

"Are there other cities?"

"I don't know."

"How far have you gone?"

"To the fence."

"What fence?"

He looked at me curiously. "The one around the city."

"There's not a fence. I've never seen a fence." How could there be a fence? Surely, I would have at least heard about it. For the first time, I realized that there may be things I didn't know about this city. There may be secrets.

"The one around the city! You haven't _seen_ it?" He asked in shock.

"No. Is there really a fence? What kind of fence is it?"

"It's a big wire one. It has censors on it, it'll shock people wearing chips if they try to climb it but I've seen natural kids playing on it before. They don't get shocked." Pomaigs have chips. They're our identity, implanted into our shoulders. Everything in the city is run on chips. You're house recognizes you by your chip and unlocks the door when you go to open it. The library identifies you when you walk in and recommends books for you based on what you've been studying recently. It remembers what page in what book you last read. Everything reads chips, even the politia can track you by your chip.

"How would you remove a chip?"

"Are you actually thing about-"

"Keep your voice down!" You never know who's listening, words carry farther than their projected sound waves.

"Oh, sorry." His eyes quickly glanced around, making sure there were no visible threats. "I…I know a person."

"Who?"

"A doctor. He's a pomaig too, a runaway. But look, you can't leave the city. It's too dangerous. If they found you, they'd make you a curvus. Even if you got over the fence, you wouldn't know what to do."

"Who says?"

"I do. Trust me, you don't know about the world outside the city."

"I'm not saying that I actually will. I just wanted to know. What would I have to know?"

He looked very conflicted. "I can't tell you."

"Why not?"

"It's a crazy idea!"

"You were thinking it too!"

"But I'm not crazy enough to try it!"

"Why not!? What's keeping you? Are you attached to this?" I pointed out toward the city. "You said it yourself, it's all fake. I can't do it! I can't live like this anymore. Someday, I'll be just as dead and brainwashed as everyone of them."

"But if you leave-"

"I may die, I know. At least I won't have to live for an eternity, caught in this vicious cycle of immortality. Every lifetime I'll become less and less human. Thousands of years of propaganda will make me into a circus animal. I can't." He was at a loss for words, unable to fight me off anymore. He knew I was right, of course I'm right. "_Can_ you help me?"

High levels of anxiety and confusion caused him to twitch and pant endlessly. "I don't know what you mean-"

"I mean, _do you know the way out_?" If being a bully is what it took, I would pressure it out of him.

"Yes." He said as if condemning himself.

"And do you know the land? Like how to find and make food?"

"I-I guess I do."

"And would you ever consider leaving this place for good?"

"Well of course but that doesn't mean-"

"I'll see you again tomorrow, Antonio. Same spot, same time." I stood up and put one foot in front of the other with a newfound confidence. I hadn't actually thought this all out yet, it was mostly a rash decision but I'd give myself the night to think it over. In the heat of the moment, it felt right.

"Lovino!" He cried after me. "You forgot-"

"Keep it." I said. I knew he was going to read it, he's curious. Curiosity is all it takes. A few words from our prized poets can drive a man pursue the truth and a few quotes from our wise story-tellers will fill a man with images of grandeur. Give a man a book and he'll be smarter than the man trying to catch a fish.

I kept walking until I got into the city. Large buildings, many rooms, all housing their own little secret agendas. Nobody knows anybody, nobody looks out the window to wonder what shapes the clouds will make. They're all so, so busy with their assigned tasks. They strive for perfection, for a mastery of all elements. So then, where am I in all of this? I'm the one on the street, staring up at the rain-less roof and wishing that it would let just a drop or two fall down on my head. The grass on the lawns grows one inch tall, every blade, the exact same. Every house is white, every roof is brown. The dogs never shed their fur, the leaves never fall, the windows never smudge. Everything is perfect. Except that it's not. It's a house of glass composed of a billion fragments, all held together in a delicate balance. One ripple will send it shuddering. One rock will shatter the whole thing.

My mother was in the living room with a stranger. They were talking. The stranger wore the blue uniform of a police officer and chatted on delightfully with her. My mind flooded with images of my arrest. They must have heard me just now. They're listening. They know. "Lovino, sweetie!" Her ripe, red lips smiled when I came in. Hair so perfectly curled, nails so perfectly polished.

"Hello." I relied nervously and shut the door behind myself.

"Hey there, Sport." The police are the only people in the whole town who talk like that. I have no idea why they do it. Maybe it makes them seem more friendly or something. It just makes me more nervous. My mother proceeded to ask why I had only been gone three hours. Normally, I stay four.

"I don't feel well." It wasn't necessarily a lie. In fact, I was feeling quite nauseous. Even if it were a lie, nobody would question it. People don't need to lie. A perfect society is one in which we can all trust each other. If I said I felt sick, every brainwashed clone in town would believe it.

"Oh dear! Go take a Zimiplex, won't you? I'd hate for you to get a migraine." Zimiplex is the drug to end all drugs. It's a miracle of a sort. If you feel odd in anyway, you take a Zimiplex and within a minute, all of your troubles will be solved. I got it out of the bathroom cabinet and dumped one red tablet out onto my palm. I considered just taking the whole bottle. There was a point were people were overdosing on Zimiplex almost ten times a day so they changed the recipe. It's almost impossible now. Like I said, you can't cheat the system.

When I came back into the living room, all eyes were on me. "Are you feeling better now, dear? Of course you are, Zimiplex always works. Fit as a fiddle, that's what they say. Why don't you sit with us?" I took a seat and listened in on the conversation. The good news was that they weren't discussing my whereabouts. Bad news is that they weren't discussing much of anything at all. "Have you read any good books lately? I just read one the day before last. It was about birds."

"Fine creatures." The officer answered.

"Don't you think?"

"Just fine."

"Marvelous, really. I read about one called a Robin."

"A fine name."

"And another called a dove. They're lovely."

"Absolutely."

"And there was another. Oh, I think I've forgotten the name. What was it? Lovino, dear, do you remember? I was telling you about it last night. The blue one?"

"Blue Jay." I answered.

"Yes, of course! The Blue Jay!"

"Mom, I'm going to go up to my room."

"Alright, dear."

I stood up and began to leave when the stranger stopped me and called me back over to him. My heart just about exploded through my chest. Slowly, my feet retreated as ordered. I prayed that he couldn't hear my chest as loudly as I was hearing it. He stood up in an awful intimidating way. His giant hand lifted and stretched around to the backside of my head. He pinched my collar then pulled it back to show me a golden yellow leaf, held tightly between his fingers. "Stuck to your collar."

"Oh, thanks." I quickly felt for more.

"Where did you say you just came from?"

"The library." He inspected the leaf. I quickly came up with an excuse before he either put the pieces together or blew a fuse while thinking too hard. "I picked it off a tree. They look so nice this time of year, don't you think?"

He smiled. "Yes, they do. That's why we have to keep them on the trees, so everyone can enjoy them as much as you. You know you're not supposed to be pick'n 'em."

"I'm sorry. I won't do it again." He accepted this apology with a pap on the shoulder.

"We have to be careful where we walk around here, son. It only takes one person to mess up a beauty meant to be enjoyed by everyone. That's what messed up the world last time, everyone being greedy. They'd see something nice and want to take some for themselves. Either that or they'd destroy the whole thing so that nobody could have it. Now, it's only a leaf so I won't raise no fuss about it but you ought to be careful. You best be more careful where you walk. If I see you making more trouble for the city, I'll have to tell someone." He left his heavy hand on my shoulder for a moment longer, driving in the intimidation.

"Of course." I mumbled, hoping I didn't seem as terrified as I truly was. He knew, he definitely knew.

"Right then." His smile was large and drunken-looking, empowered by his ability to intimidate small children. "Well, run off. I'm sure you've got a great nerve cell report waiting for you upstairs."

I ran off to my room as soon as I got over the terror of him knowing my personal studies. How could he know that? My mother wouldn't have told him, she's too concerned with talking about herself and her own studies. What do they know? Do they watch me? Is the library safe? Where are the eyes, how many of them are there? I collapsed onto the bed. _So close_. I can't afford to be that close all the time. so much danger and it's all just waiting an inch away. It only comes down to what danger you're closest to first. Someday, I run out of lucky breaks. Today was just one step closer.

I looked at the tiny hairs on the back of my hand. They were standing erect. They were afraid. They were alive. _I _was alive. Why did nobody ever tell me I was alive? They just expected me to know this. They don't tell you that you're dead either. I guess it's not that big of a deal. Who cares? Being alive means the same as being dead nowadays. I wanted to do things. I had a list in my head of all the things I wanted to do while I was alive. I wanted to eat chocolate and take a nap and get rained on and stare into the mirror for a long time, just to name a few.

I began to think about Antonio, trying to block out the incessant laughter that echoed up the stairs. Antonio knew where that fence was, he had a bike, he knew the world outside, he was perfect. I needed him. Without Antonio, I wouldn't even make it to the train tracks. I wondered what made him such a curious person. He thought about such odd things and he had a way of making you believe you'd known him your whole life. Maybe he was like me. Maybe he read too much and it filled him with crazy ideas.

Where would we go? We'd follow the tracks. They have to lead somewhere. Maybe there are other towns. Maybe we'll just die of starvation or we'd be attacked by kill-mutant lab-rejects. I just hoped that when they got us, we'd at least be far enough away that the search team wouldn't find our bodies.

The chip situation would be rough. I've never had a knife in my skin before. I've never even seen my own blood. I mean, I've gotten a paper cut before but my skin is the best that our race has to offer. It clots instantly and scabs for no longer than a day. My red blood cell count dominates the white which was cripplingly near a mere 500. I would essentially die if I left the city for too long. You see, the city is clean. There are sensors in every doorway that asses your bacterial content and spray you with otherwise unnoticeable disinfectants. My body hasn't ever needed to fight illnesses so I don't need the amount that naturals do. I've been told that my white blood cell count is unusually high for someone who lives in the city full time but I suppose that's because I frequently visit the reservation. In any regards, I'd have to make some serious changes before I could even think about leaving.

I'm not sure how much I would miss my mom and dad. I _would_ miss them but I would feel mostly sadness because I'd be leaving them to be cannibalized by the system. I can't save them. They wouldn't understand and I don't have time to make them understand. The walls are closing in, time is running out. It'll just be me and Antonio. I have lots of books stored up in my head to tell him. I can teach him what I know and he can do the same. I don't know what I planned to do. It's not like we were going to find some sort of hidden, uncorrupted village to repopulate and educate. We would just be a couple of idiots trying to run away from the destiny we were born into. No matter how much I denied it, I was a clone, something people only knew of in science fiction a little while back.

Back in the old world, when people started being cloned, there were protests. They were called the Dolly Died Riots, referring to the first successfully cloned mammal from an adult somatic cell, Dolly the sheep. It was a huge deal when it first happened. The thing is, she was born with minor deformities and only lived to seven years of age. These riots would crowd around labs that were practicing human cloning and hold up signs that said "DΩLLY DIED", drawing attention to the imperfections of cloning. A lot of people had to die before human cloning was accepted. Even then, it was rare. School children would be teased, called Lambs as if they were the offspring of that first sheep. As time went on, it became just a way of life. If you had the option of waiting around for a baby that may or may not have dwarfism or mental retardation versus waiting around for a baby that would look like your favorite popstar and be equipped with a set of perfectly functioning organs, which would you choose?

I just laid on my bed thinking until the clock struck nine. After going to sleep at the same time every day for your entire life, your body gets pretty used to the schedule. I fell asleep almost the instant I heard the clock chime. It was a slightly horrifying form of clockwork. It was hard to think that they had trained my body to become unconscious at the same time every day. In the old world, people would just lay around and slowly descend into sleep unlike now where consciousness is as fickle as trust, initiated and broken by the slightest whim.

It wasn't my DNA that made me a clone so much as it was the world. I do the same thing every day, say the same things, think the same things, never once taking action on my plans to break free. As far as anyone could tell, Feliciano never died. Finally, I had a way out. A curly-haired, tan-skinned, smiling way out. I hardly believed it would work myself but that didn't mean I wouldn't try. That dumb, skinny boy was my answer. I was going to see him tomorrow and all the while, my anxiety pooled in my stomach. Today, my world flipped. Today was the first day of Lovino Vargas' life.


	2. The Silent Purge

The Daisy Genocide

_The Silent Purge_

Just as soon as I was asleep, I was awake. Six-O-Clock, sharp. Eyes open. Blankets removed. Up. Walk. Bathroom. Brush teeth, wash face, comb hair. In that order. Always in that order. Then I stare at a piece of glass and wonder who's staring back. Is it the dead twin? No, can't be, he's dead. I know, I saw the paperwork. It sure looks like him. Must be that fake one, the replacement, the cover up for a disgusting secret. The secret that death still exists, the secret that it still controls man, no matter how much we think we know because we don't know nearly as much as we think we do. Humans are the world's best dumpee. We lie and deny and pretend like we have the power to hold it all intact. The truth is that the world doesn't care one bit about us. It exists on its own and it doesn't need our help. Long after we're gone, it'll just be one, dumb, hunk of rock whirling through the atmosphere. Nothing will have changed.

When my five minutes of self-pity were up, I got dressed in an outfit that looked remarkably like the one I wore yesterday and went downstairs. Six thirty sharp.

Mother was waiting. She was most easily compared to a doll, still and smiling and pretty. Her hair was always the same length and curled in on the ends. Her makeup was always perfect. Her nails were always perfect, her outfit was always perfect. She was always perfect, the ideal pomaig. "Good morning, Sweetie." She flashed me her white teeth. She rarely calls me by my name, sometimes I think that she must have forgotten it.

"Good morning." I retrieved a glass from the cupboard.

"What are you doing?" She asked, sounding panicked for a moment.

"Getting a drink of water."

"Why?"

"Am I not allowed to?"

"No, no, it's fine, dear." My mother resents the fact that I may not be a normal person. She's petrified when I do something out of schedule, however insignificant it may be. She likes the schedule, she likes it when she knows exactly what's happening and what's going to happen next. I filled the glass with water and sat across from her. "Um…Lovino?"

"Yes?"

"You're sitting in your father's chair."

"Am I? Oh, well, I'll move if he comes home but I doubt he will. He's got a board meeting today, right?"

"Yes but, you have your own chair right here." She papped the seat of it softly with her fingers.

"I think I may be growing out of it."

She was so confused. She looked from the chair to me and back. "That's impossible. One doesn't simply grow out of a chair."

I shrugged and continued to sip at the water. I had been feeling more rebellious recently. My mother didn't say anything for a while as if she may be thinking. "Lovino, sweetie, are you feeling well?"

"Absolutely. I'm grand. Why do you ask?"

"You've been especially peculiar lately."

"I don't see why. I feel the same as I've always felt. Do I appear sickly?"

"No. I just…"

"What?"

"I think it would be best if you focused more on being like Feliciano. When I was younger, I trained myself to be more like my grandmother. I learned her movements and I even improved them some myself. You see, it's part of our culture. That's how we become the best people we can be. That's how we ripen ourselves. Feliciano was a good egg, now it's your responsibility to take that and improve it."

My responsibility!? It's my responsibility to dedicate my life to some dead kid that I never even knew? What am I? Who am I? I'm not my brother, I know that much. Do my appearance and gene combinations really decide my life? It's like being given a blank journal and being told that the only thing you can write in it is he sequel to another journal. Of course, I didn't voice any of these opinions to her for fear of being admitted to the curvus denomination. "I'm going upstairs." I informed her.

"Aren't you going to the library today?"

"Yes." I answered and marched into my room before she could ask anything else. I returned after five minutes and explained that I had to put my shoes on.

"You weren't wearing them when you came down?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"I forgot."

"You forgot?"

"Yes."

"How? You put them on at the same time every day. How did you forget?"

"It just happened." An answer like that hadn't been used in hundreds of years. The woman stared at me for a very long time, trying to remember who I was. I guess I had gone too far with the whole shoe thing. A pool of guilt built up in my abdomen. It wasn't her fault that she didn't understand. It wasn't her fault that she was caught in the machine. I told her again that I was going to the library and kissed her cheek apologetically. She smiled and patted my back before dismissing me. Just as my hand rested on the door knob, she reminded me once more to go through Feliciano's records. I said I woud.

I wanted to take the long way to the reservation so that I'd feel more confident in my privacy. The officer was watching, I knew he was. The city was a glass house and I was holding a rock.

I went all the way over to the curvus camps, checking out what may very well be my future residence. It was an odd place, very different from the city. Everybody was still and quiet and depressed. As soon as I was visible through the wire fence, their world became motionless. They all stared at me because they knew as well as I did that I was one of them. I kept walking under the pressure of their constant glares. I was one of the few people not afraid to look back. Behind the fence, they all stood with thin, weak forms. Their eyes sunk back into their grey faces and their mouths remained slightly parted as if they would say something if they knew how to. Some looked like they were working and others sat at makeshift board-games.

I could see a gigantic concrete tunnel, the passageway into their rooms. On the inner wall of the mammoth-sized entrance was written DΩLLY DIƎD in a dripping, red liquid that I preferred not to think of as blood. The omega sign was used for its significance in the Greek alphabet, symbolizing the end of an entire process. It's a rebel's way of saying that Dolly was the end of the whole cloning business.

Fear struck me like a palm to the face. I wasn't sure which of the components made me most afraid. Was it the dead-looking people cast out by natural-born imperfections? Or was it the fact that somebody would have to be _taken care of_ pretty soon for writing such a thing? Maybe it was the fact that even _I_ had been tricked into disregarding these creatures as "not real people". As if their species was a grade lower than my own. Suddenly, I was disgusted with myself. I glanced elsewhere but found that I was disgusted with the trees and the rocks and the clouds. It was all lies, all of it a trap meant to catch us and force us into endless life without a hope of bail. I was horribly nauseous. My chest turned and my eye sockets ached fiercely as if my brain was pushing down on them. My eyes kept sweeping over to the splattered-blood message, etching it into my brain. The words taunted me with their evil truth. They drummed in my ears. Hundreds of dead eyes just watched and watched and watched and watched and watched me. I was wrong to go by the camps! I was wrong to ever look in!

My walk turned into a well-paced sprint. I wanted to run away before I did anymore thinking. Thinking leads us to epiphanies and sometimes, those epiphanies make you realize that everything in the world is sinful and terrible and that you are tiny and insignificant.

I froze dead when I felt a forceful hand land on my shoulder. "This is the sprout I was telling you about!" The hand's owner claimed to his friend. He was a tall man, blue suit, short hair, grey eyes. It was the officer from last night! What was his name? Damn, I couldn't remember! He must have said it at some point. Or maybe he didn't. It doesn't matter, nobody knows each other. I bet his friend didn't even know his name.

"Sir?" I asked, my heart racing.

"This is him." He went on talking to his friend, ignoring me. "The one from the other night. I told you about him, of course I did."

"Lucy's kid?" The friend asked.

"Yeah, the one on fourteen-street."

The friend smiled a sly, revolting, yellow-toothed smile. "Man, I wouldn't mind hav'n a bite a'that." His words slurred, the way policemen's words always do. I felt sick partially because of the camps, partially because of the running and now partially because of the sexual comment made towards my mother. But that's how people are. They're straight and buckled up while the camera's rolling but after that, the horrendous proof of humanity begins to ooze out.

"I know what you're saying! I was over there just last night and I tell ya', she got legs for miles. She wears those real small skirts too, ya know? Maybe with her husband gone all'a time, she'd be willing to get a little flexible, eh? For a good ol' cop, eh?"

He and his buddy laughed their vile, piggly laughs and elbowed each other in the sides. I wondered when I could just slip away without them noticing. I live with hogs like this. My mother is a nice and incredibly beautiful woman who spends her time at home like a widow. It's easy to see how these desperate idiots are drawn like flies to honey.

The sex jokes continued, getting too detailed for my liking. Never once did they question my presence. They just figured I could wait, like a good boy, until they had finished defiling my mother in their imaginations. "So, Bucko," The owner of the hand said, once again applying pressure on my shoulder, "What's the rush?"

"I'm exercising." They had given me plenty of time to shape my excuse.

"What for?" The friend laughed. Apparently, exercising is the funniest joke in the world to him. Right behind the details of my mother and father's sex life.

"To think. When I can't figure out a problem, I like to take a jog. The answers just come to me."

"I ain't seen you round here that often." One of them said. It doesn't matter which. They're the same person or close enough to it.

"Well, it's a recent discovery. One of my friends suggested it to me."

"Yeah? Which friend?"

That's a stupid question. Nobody knows each other and nobody cares. "Mill Charles August." He was a friend of mine who overdosed last year. He was one of the smartest guys I ever knew, I guess that's why he wanted to die so badly.

"Is that the kid from last week?" One officer asked the other. "Who?" "You know, the one from the pool?" "Oh! That kid with the older sister. Cute red-head, right?" (Mill never had a sister) "Yeah. That was him, wasn't it?" "Yeah, I'm sure it was! Do you think I'd forget a name like Mill Charles August?"

Apparently, he did. But you can't blame him, all the really smart people kill themselves. As soon as someone realizes the hell we live in, they're gone. He was one of eight of my friends that year that got lucky.

"What're you studying now? No, wait, don't tell me, I'll remember." Adults never want to be told anything by kids. They seem offended in the fact that a child might know things that they don't. Like it's disrespectful or something. "Stem cells, was it?"

"No, it-"

"Don't tell me, don't tell me! It was…uh… fruit flies!"

"_No_, but-"

"It was…um…let's see here…it's right on the tip of my tongue…oh! I remember! It was birds, wasn't it? I remember you saying something about them." (Nerve cells, you idiot!)

"That's right, you've got quite the memory." I commented with a plastic smile.

He proudly tapped a finger against the side of his cranium. "This old boy is still sharp. You know, I always was a bright kid. My teachers called me a down right genius." (Of course they did, that's why you're a policeman).

"Did they? I wouldn't doubt it." (Hey genius, your pants are unzipped).

"Yup. But don't worry. All you have to do is study real hard. I'm sure you can work your way up the ladder, sprout. You just have to utilize your resources. Everything special about you is right here, in your blood. "He papped down on my shoulder again and it was driving me crazy. "You just have to tap into it. All your potential is right here." Maybe for him it was but not for me. I'm more than my DNA, I'm not some imposter like him.

"You must be a product of Ghandi." I had a hard time concealing my urge to smile. He didn't have more than four nucleotides in common with Ghandi.

Though, I'm guessing he didn't know who Ghandi was. This presumption is based on his following response, "Well, I have always been a good singer."

"I really have to get going. I haven't quite figured out that whole flying thing that birds do."

He laughed, feeling so much smarter than me."Well then, be off. Just stay off the reservation. A bunch of demon-worshiping hippies they are." He took his hand off me. Although it was sanitized, it felt grimy and filthy and I was grateful to have it removed. "And don't go pick'n no leaves off the trees now. Ya wouldn't want to be raise'n a fuss. I'd hate to bring you into the station, Sport."

"Of course not." I agreed. I ran for a very long time. Probably a whole minute and a half. To the naturals, that's nothing, but to pomaigs like me who have their physiques handed to them on a silver platter, it's something like a 5K. I made it all the way to the reservation though without running into dumb and dumber again. Antonio was waiting, just as I had told him to be. "Hello." He greeted but I responded with "Hey" instead. When I did the same things every day, I felt sickly. It was a fairly new occurrence in my life, a side-effect of epiphanies. I sat.

The book was handed back to me by the tan-skinned boy. "Did you read it?"

"Every word. Sometimes over again."

I took it back, secretly relieved to have my treasure returned to me. "How'd you like it?"

He lazily fell onto his side in the leaves, a small smile playing on his lips. "It hurt when my fingers left its pages. I feel like it has taken precious emotions from me and stored them away into specks of dust and now the only way for me to protect them is to keep the book with me at all times."

I fell over as well. "There was a day when houses were full of books like these." I was glad to be talking about something that would keep my mind off police men and forgotten shoes and blood graffiti.

"I wish for this to be a dream. I wish to suddenly awake and go into my library and pull a world from off the shelf."

"Are you sure you're a natural?"

"Yes."

"You seem awfully…" I couldn't find the word.

"Unnatural?" He asked with a chuckle.

"Exactly." I didn't laugh. In fact, I never laughed.

"People say I'm crazy."

"I can believe that."

"Maybe I am but I believe that you're crazy too."

"Mind your own." I scolded.

"I won't offend you! I never mean too! Insanity is so much more compelling than a life that so many live today. Do they think?"

"Of course they think."

"Yes, I know, but more than that. What do they think about?"

"Plenty of things. Like, how long can people live? And what's the latest news from the lab? All very important things."

"Neither of those things are important at all!"

"Well of course they are!"

"Death is inevitable. Someday, Lovino, all humans will die and nobody will remember our pretend existence. These people are all delusional. I am certain that the universe will not cease on account of the humans. It will go on living and spinning farther and farther away from itself. Maybe it'll collapse back in and a new universe will be created from the ash of this one. Nothing here matters. Someday, it'll be over and this species will be forgotten. Don't huddle over a text book in a fury to find immortality. People are meant to die, death is a gift that proves that our existence was full."

_God damn. _

Suddenly, something happened. I'd never vomited before but from what I'd read, it felt similar to this. My stomach became tight, my face hot, my hair prickled up on the back of my head in such a weird way that it made me happy. I told my mouth to speak but it didn't so I told my brain to think of something to say but it couldn't. I just watched the boy as if I were completely mad. "Didn't think I could think, did you?"

"N-no, Of course you're capable of thinking. I just didn't know you were any good at it."

"My friend is quick to judge."

"I wouldn't call our relationship that."

"Friendship? Have you ever had any?"

"Sure."

"With who?"

"Jonas from the library, Aton from the library, and Mary from the library."

"I assume you spend a lot of time in the library."

"I do."

"So tell me about Jonas, Aton, and Mary from the library."

"Jonas studies biochemical engineering, Aton studies genetics and Mary is currently doing some lab work in the study of protein synthesis."

"Do you know anything interesting about these people?"

"I am offended that you don't find any of those things interesting." I said lamely and half sarcastically.

He laughed and lazily pushed the dark hair away from his eyes. "Do your friends do things other than studying?"

"Well then must."

"But you don't know?"

"It hasn't come up."

"What is it that people down in the city talk about? Have they any interest besides studying and paddling around in a pool?" Swimming was almost the only recreational activity in town although, there was no competitive swimming, only children playing and adults lounging.

"I feel like you're judging me right now."

"I would never! I'm a curious person, Lovino, and I don't deny myself the privilege of wondering things. I wonder about adults and why they're so close minded then I wonder about children and if they'll become adults someday."

"That's the kind of attitude that makes people suspicious."

"People used to wonder about things all the time."

"They were small minded people without answers, you can't blame them."

"I wasn't blaming them, I'm in envy. I'd love to sit around with complete strangers and think about things. It wouldn't matter what things because there's plenty to think about. We wouldn't wonder why the sky is blue but rather if there were really a person up there. The best questions are the ones that are so hard to answer that nobody can."

My stomach reacted again but I kindly ignored it. "Don't tell me you think God is real."

"Of course I do!"

"Why? Everybody knows He's not. Never once has there been any scientific evidence that-"

"That's what I like about him." He interrupted. "He completely abandons science, he is a world apart from us."

"You can't be serious." Believing in God was like believing in the tooth fairy. It was a fantasy invented ages ago for the pathetically hopeless and weak.

"Why not?"

"It's ridiculous! Everybody knows there's no Messiah on a golden cloud! We've flown planes in and out of those vapor clusters endless times. We've sent rockets and radar even farther."

"I doubt He'd just be dealing cards up there, Lovino." He laughed at the thought. "It's more of a metaphor, a hope. I feel like someday a will of God will make things better. And if I die for good, maybe I'll live in that world apart where nothing obeys laws and theories. That's all I want. Besides, if it's all make-believe, I won't have hurt anyone, will I?"

I ignored him in favor of not compromising the truth for something so amazingly delusional yet metaphorically genius. He was odd. Not natural but not pomaig… the more he opened his mouth, the more invested I was. He was like a book, slowly unfolding into something quite unpredictable yet so captivating. "You're odd." Was all I said.

His laughed echoed around in my skull. It had something about it, a special heartiness too it or something. "Then we have something in common. Tell me, have you always been so strange? People in the city are always so busy even though they seem like they're doing nothing at all. What do you all do that keeps you so impossibly busy?"

"Cleaning and studying and listening to the soundisome." The soundisome is something like a radio but it stores an audio library. You can listen to music (mostly classical) or reports or news or a book. It's a convenient little thing. When I was young, I listed to a program that has always run, The Adventures of Gallagan. Sunday after Sunday, Proffesser J.A. Gallagan would travel to one of the billions of stars and discover an amazing knew species of plant or perhaps he would bring along the geologist love-interest, Foster and they would escape the clutches of Martian monster men. It didn't matter what treacherous voyage awaited them, they'd return to Earth safe and sound by eight o'clock every night. Every young child not only listened to Gallagan's tales, but they also reenacted them when splashing around in the pool. I was always chosen to act the part of Foster, being an unusually small and feminine-looking boy. I'd be the one who had to stay in the deep end, awaiting rescue while that dumb-ass Gallagan slaughtered his fifth Martian in a row. That wasn't nearly as bad as my role on land though. I was still elected to play Ms. Fairalie Foster only they would stuff my shirt as if a had breasts and leave me hidden somewhere in the house until Gallagan recovered me. I believe those days accounted the majority of my bitterness and sexual indifference for years to come. As far as anyone was concerned, from ages four to seven, I was a female.

"When they have such an abundance of technology, why aren't there robots who do those things for you?" Antonio said, breaking my trance of thought. I had completely forgotten what we were talking about so I stared at him for a moment, piecing together the previous conversation.

"Oh! Uh… man is a productive creature. He cannot sit by without feeling accomplished. Because our activities have become so limited, we cherish the routine of remedial tasks. After all, if the people feel unaccomplished, the rebel."

"But what about your mother? She can't possibly clean all day."

"Believe me, she can. She'll move every piece of furniture when she vacuums. Still, she does a great deal of reading on her own and last summer, she organized her community group fundraiser. She's a busy woman."

"And your father?"

I was silent for a long time. I didn't know what to say about him because I barely knew the man. So few memories came to my mind and they were all drafty images that consisted of him towering over me, patting my head like adults do when they can't afford to spent the time coming up with a compliment that suits you. I focused my thoughts on glimpses I had caught of his face. "He has a mustache…and he wears glasses sometimes."

"What does he do?"

"Genetic Engineering. He builds things."

"What kinds of things?"

"I haven't any idea." I admitted.

"But he's your father." The boy objected with a look of confusion.

"That doesn't mean anything. He's only as much my father as I am his son, which isn't very much. I think he misses Feliciano, I think he's in on the secret."

"What secret? Who's Feliciano?"

"Don't be thick, Antonio. _I'm_ Feliciano. Only… Feliciano is dead. I'm just what comes next. The thing is, even if I have his same DNA, I can never be him. _That's_ the secret and my dad hates it. Sometimes, he calls me by my brother's name and doesn't think twice about it. As far as I'm concerned, Colonel is my father." I hugged the coverless book against my chest.

"Oh…Lovino, I'm sorry…"

"What of it? Everyone's doing it nowadays. Why shouldn't we force life upon poor little Feliciano again? No death is justified, no death should be permanent. Those people are using me. My parents, Feliciano's friends, his teachers, his enemies, they all see me as a pile of organs, a cog in the wheel. It's not the body that bothers me most though, it's the fact that my life is the continuation of his and when I die, this body will be resurrected and that poor god damn kid is going to spend his whole god damn life reading generations of instruction manuals. Smile like this, talk like this, frown like this, why aren't you more like your brothers? What do they want? For me to remove all the DNA from my body and replace it with his? Well lucky them, some scientist did just that back when I was only a petri dish. The only way I could be more Feliciano is if he had never died at all." My eyes slowly fell into my lap with shame. I can't believe I had said that. Get a hold of yourself, Lovino. One second I was just talking and the next moment, my lips were moving with the words that had been held captive for so long. It just came out. Those thoughts were private. I had stupidly become too comfortable around Antonio. So stupid.

"Wow…I mean…Jesus, Lovino." I glanced up. His smile was light and simple yet it refused to falter and in some way, that gave me hope. "I wish I had written that down. It's great."

"Shut up. You can't write down my life story, it's an invasion of privacy."

"Of course not! Your life story is far too long and incredible for me to put down."

"No, actually, that was it. That's what makes up Lovino Vargas."

He gasped, greatly offended. "Untrue! The Lovino Vargas that I have known for a meager few hours is an beautiful human being with stories living inside his very being! He is amazing!"

My entire body became inflamed. I panicked, thinking I was dying. That's the only explanation, right? Heart racing, muscles tensing, flesh reddening. Those are all sure-fire signs of appending death. Unfortunately, I think about death quite a lot and it makes me certain that I am constantly dying, the only thing that changes is how quickly I am dying. It varies by time of the day. In the morning, I am fairly sure that I may live for years to come but by late afternoon, death is suddenly so much closer, like a viper that waits until you're not looking to attack. I began to talk in order to avoid the suspicion that I was deathly allergic to Antonio. Talking is a good way to distract myself. "S-so do you have any siblings?"

"Me? No."

"Lucky."

"One is the loneliest number. I wish I at least had _an idea_ of a brother to love, like you do."

"Oh, I don't love him." I said easily without the slightest flinch of remorse.

"What?"

"To say it bluntly, I hate him more than I've ever loved him."

"Don't you mourn for him? Stanger or not, he's your brother."

"I don't. He's dead. What good will it do if I sit around and think about how dead he is?"

"And you can't even love him?"

"How could I? The only thing that could make me love him is if he were alive to fulfill his role here in this life. Instead he just went off and pinned some innocent egg with the job. That sounds pretty selfish to me. Even I'm considerate enough to think about the next Feliciano down the line."

"Lovino!"

"Say what you will! I don't care; I won't say I love him if I don't. He died with my mother loving him, that's the worst thing you can do to someone, even worse than what he did to me. Now she loves me in his place and it kills me like you can't understand. He goes off and kicks the bucket, leaving me to face the weeping family and hateful glares. I was the one threatened to be a curvus, I'm the one who is constantly ridiculed for being less perfect, I'm the one who has to live on as him forever, never having a voice in this pathetic rat race! I'm the one he goes to bed every night in a shallow grave! He's dead! Who the hell cares if he finishes his studies in nerve cells! I hate the god damn things but here I am, walking a straight line, keeping my eyes forward and following ever one on his moves. Why can't I be Lovino!? It's because of him!"

I paused for a minute, not because I was done but because my lungs were in great need of air. "I'm the victim of this genetic lottery game so excuse me if I don't love that little saboteur."

My fiery eyes never once left his and in those big, green, orbs, I caught a glimpse of my own passion thrown back at me, mixed with excitement and something new, his eyes had something else in them… something…pure. I was confused because it was a kind yet dangerous emotion. It was enticing, it made me want to look back. He found himself speechless.

"What?" I spat, still feeling the effects of my blood pulsing a hundred times a second.

"N-Nothing…"

Then I noticed that he wouldn't stop looking at me. Antonio SmoothGuy never took his eyes off me.I tried looking away and looking back but he was still just watching me. It wasn't even the kind of watching that happens when you're just thinking about someone or trying to name the color of his or her hair, it was the wide-eyed stare of a person facing a world-altering epiphany. I demanded what again. "N-no, it's nothing!" He finally broke trance. A quick smile was forced up but it didn't hold for more than the blink of an eye. "I have to go." He stood up.

"What!? I came out here, risking my life, so you could listen to me tell you very private things then leave in a matter of minutes? What kind of bullshit is that!?" Truthfully, I was feeling rather empowered by this new-found assertiveness. My problems just floated away, I liked it.

For a second there, his eyes got wide and I was sure that he would zone off again. "I'm sorry but it's very important."

"What about the plan? Y'know…_the plan_?"

"Oh, yeah. I'm in if you're in. I'll come to your house tonight and we'll talk about it or whatever." He said quickly, in a rush to leave. Had my sudden release of emotion been too much for him? Maybe he thought I was a madman.

"What is so damn important? Will you just _tell me_?"

"I have…_experts_ to consult." He declared after wracking his brain for the right words.

"Experts?"

"Y'know. Shakespere, Fitzgerald, Twain, etcetera. I'll see you tonight, okay? Tonight. You can bet on it."

"You don't know where I live." I called after him.

"I have ways."

"Please, Lovino, this is a matter of great importance. I assure you that there are consequences associated with the possibility of staying even a moment longer. you'll have to excuse me just this once. Say you will, say you'll let me leave you now and expect me tonight."

"I'm not-"

"Say you will!" He interjected, a piteous look on his face. I knew he wanted so badly to leave and I also knew he wouldn't without my proper consent.

"Fine, go… but don't think that I'm not the least bit concerned with how you plan on discovering the exact locations of my house." I huffed with frustration. He laughed, nodded, and turned on his heal with a quick thanks for the book I had loaned him.

And he was gone just like that. I sat there for a while, stunned. Such a hasty retreat, it made me wonder why. Could it be that he was just an incurably odd person who has secretive alternate plans or had I said something? I had said everything. It all came out. Why did that happen? Antonio was different, I knew that from the begin but I didn't expect something like this. I remained in my warm nest of leaves for a while, just thinking. Thinking is so much better when it's quiet and you're alone. It gives your mind freedom. Without freedom, your mind thinks contained thoughts which are often painfully dull and repetitive.

First, I thought about the stranger that had so recently walked away from me. What did I know of him? Why did he make me feel so alive when I was positive I was dying. How is such a paradox made possible? He gave me a pain that had the aftertaste of pleasure. It was disgustingly addictive. Our eyes would meet then suddenly, there would be this disturbing burst in my ribcage right before I felt a tingling shiver that made me want more. When I remembered his face, somehow I couldn't picture any part of it but that smile because it outshone every other feature.

I wanted to be around him yet very far away. I wanted to touch his face all over yet slap him across it. I wanted him to laugh. I wanted him to do that swaying thing and I wanted to notice him peaking little glances over at my cowlick from time to time. I wanted to do everything with him that we had been doing but more. In larger quantities. I just want to be around his being because it exhilarated me. Maybe it was the scandal that made me feel this way. Maybe it was the disobedience that this stranger offered me. Or maybe it was my curiosity that made me like this. Something about him was strange. His ears, his throat, his brow, and especially those striking green eyes. They fueled my raging desire to read farther and farther into him. Because of all of this, Antonio was able to keep me close. I was desperately trying to follow his trail, it drove me wild. I wanted to know him and maybe someday learn the secret of what makes him Antonio.

I came to the conclusion that what I was feeling was a deceiving, dangerous emotion and because of that, I was going to stop by the library on my way back and check for any medical account of a patient dying due to exposer to an imbecile. An imbecile who may or may not be attracting me with smooth hair and warm skin… An imbecile who may or may not be luring me into him with a velvety voice and stunning intellect… An imbecile who may or may not be driving me to the edge of insanity. Imbeciles are the most problematic specie of human.

When I arrived at the library, my chip was read by the door frame. A stoic woman's voice read out loud what book I was reading during my last visit and what page I had left it at. "Nerve cell damage an muscle obscurities," She said, "Page three hundred and thirty one."

"Thank you." I answered.

"Please, no auditory or physical distractions while inside the library. Thank you."

"Okay."

"Please, no auditory or physical distractions while inside the library. Thank you." She repeated.

"Oops, sorry." I was just playing with the system now.

"Please, no auditory or physical distractions while inside the library. Thank you."

The librarian sent a glare my way. I hurried inside and was quick to find a seat in her blind spot. Instead of a good ol' copy of Nerve cell Damage and Muscle Obscurities, I chose something better suited for my problem. I chose a hardback copy of Pride and Prejudice then spent the rest of my day in the company of Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy, learning the truth about my charming stranger. Of course, Jane Austin was right. He knew exactly how I felt and I had no hope of hiding from her. All in all, I was falling in love with the stranger.

I won't make this realization out to be anything that it's not. It didn't blow my mind or catch me off guard because after all, you know that you love someone almost the instant you first meet them. In this case, the realization was more like an unexpected pregnancy. By nature, I'm happy but by logic, I'm depressed out of my god damn mind. It's not that I didn't want to be falling in love, it's just that, I wished it hadn't happened in the first place. If I could have avoided it all together, I would have.

You see, I had loved once before… Marxi Damien August

Even to this day, his name haunts me with both memories of fondness and agonizing torture. I loved him. I cannot say that he loved me back, seeing as I was only eight years old when I knew him, and he was already approaching thirty. He always remained a child though. He was curious, he was funny, he was playful, and worst of all, he was a reader. He was practically addicted to the written word. He shoved it into every facet of his life. He'd read books and newspapers and magazines and street signs and cereal boxes, he could just never get enough.

A boy who reads cannot be tied down. He is like an angered dog, doing whatever necessary to have its voice heard. If it is roped to a pole, it was maul the rope until it is free, even if it's mouth bleeds and its teeth fall out. That was Marxi. A slender boy, twenty-five years old with happy black hair that always fell in his face. He smiled so much that the smile never left my brain. In I closed my eyes, it appeared, kind and hopeful and rebellious.

He was too smart. He could see what was happening and he took it personally. He began talking of revolution. Of intelligence. Of the people regaining their minds. He spoke of an end to slavery and oppression. He spoke of a world where cloning did not exist and life was a beautiful lottery. He spoke too much. Soon, people began to talk about the reader. We used to hide in his basement and he would make up stories to tell me and we'd laugh. We went on walks, we played ball, he even let me hang out with him and his older friends on occasion. After a while, he forbade me from walking through the streets with him on account of the time boys encircled us and beat Marxi to the ground. They spat on him and called him a wide variety of curses. With tears in his glittering blue eyes, he begged me not to follow him or even say that I knew him. He said, "Lovino, you must be careful… this world… this world is poisoning itself slowly, dying slowly, forgetting slowly. I don't know if all is lost or if there is hope but I swear, little one, I will be the first to suck the poison out. It'll be okay… as long as you can stay quiet. Hide the books, educate yourself, don't let yourself forget. Do you promise? Do you promise that?" So I did.

Each day became worse. As he rallied more followers, more whispers flew through the city. Everyone knew of the reader, the one who wanted to end cloning, our power over death. I loved him more and more each time I found secret notes in library books, left by him and his friends. On the back covers, the would write, "Freedom is bliss, death is life, knowledge is strength." Everywhere, they recited these lines. On walls, in books, even on their arms. This was their mantra. This was their holy trinity, their glimpse of hope.

On May tenth, the world ended and the mantra lay as only a heap of words, composed of meaningless symbols. Marxi had taken is most courageous leap yet. I found him in front of the Shmit and Hildener Research Facility, standing on a chair, screaming passionately. What people don't understand is that, the reason he was up there preaching and shaking his fist was because he loved us so dearly. All of us. He loved the humans, he loved them so much that he could not sit by at watch as they became sheep, so blatantly deceived, so lied to, so abused. He knew that what he was doing would land him in a curvus camp and he knew that he would be spit on and called names but he loved so deeply that no one could stop that man. That wild, crazy, man.

His speech was ended abruptly as an invisible bullet flew into his back. He face froze, for a moment displaying fear then bravery. He collapsed forward and I watched as his body fell to the ground with full force and created a resounding thump. I screamed for him, for my love. I had never seen real death before.

I ran to the body and sheltered it, screaming into his neck, crying into his black hair. There where gasps and murmurs from the crowd. A moment later, three politia officers arrived. They said nothing. One grabbed me by the waist and tore me away from the body while the other two took the limp form into their car and left. That was all there was. The words were erased, the followers scattered, and talk of revolution hushed. I seemed to be the only person in the world who remembered. I sat right where he died. When he fell off his post, one single stone tile had been cracked on impact and nobody fixed it. It was a warning. Whenever anybody walked by it, they remembered what happens to readers. Nobody ever read after that day.

The media published lies about him for the weeks to follow, saying he was undermining the system, that he was a radical, a madman with ludicrous ideas. They said that his destruction was necessary for peace. They said that all his claims against the government or scientists were false and that he was delusional. They called him a liar.

A year later, I experienced the most terrifying moment that I can recall. I saw Marxi sitting on a park bench with his nose in a book like always. I thought I had died. It was him! Whispy black hair, brilliant blue eyes, a face of deep concentration. The imposter only noticed me when I fell to my knees in front of him, eyes focused on his thick lashes.

"Are you alright?" The thin voiced asked. I saw that same naïve look of concern wash over him.

"Marxi?" I whimpered, amazed that even one sound escaped my throat.

The boy's face changed from kind worry to sadness. "You're mistaken, I'm sorry. He was your friend?"

I didn't respond. I didn't even nod my head.

"My name is Mill Charles August. Marxi was my brother." That last part what quiet as if in homage to the fallen.

"Your brother?"

"That's right. I'm sorry for the misunderstanding."

I still couldn't talk. The pain of his death hit me for a second time.

"You look ill… should I take you home?"

He did, seeing as I wasn't able to answer him. He came by the next day to make sure I was well and ever since then, we became friends. I decided I was going to marry Mill. I didn't love him but we were great friends and I felt like it was the right things to do. Marxi would want me to take care of him.

I lost Mill too though. Only in the past summer had he had enough. He took every medication in the house and laid down in his brother's bed. I heard that his parents had walked in on him as he was dying but they just closed the door and let him go, knowing that he wanted to go.

Now there's Antonio who is so dangerously related to the August brothers. Let it be said that once again, Lovino Vargas had fallen in love at the most inconvenient time with the most troublesome of people. The resemblance killed me. When he smiled, there was a voice in the back of my head that screamed, "It's him! Marxi lives! This time… _this time_, you can save him!" When I heard him read, I remembered the reader who couldn't keep his eyes off script, wherever it may be. It was happening all over only this time, Antonio was the one who's voice echoed in my ears. Antonio was stupid enough to love me back.

I went home, tired of thinking, and returned to a stranger in the living room. No… not a stranger…_my father_. "Dad?"

"Welcome home." He muttered, busy with a pile of paperwork on his lap.

"I thought there was a board meeting today."

"Canceled." Was all he said, not removing his eyes from the paper.

"Why?"

"Dave was sick. Held off until tomorrow."

"Oh? Isn't Dave the man who-"

"Feli, I'm very busy. Go play." He dismissed.

I stared at him, wondering if he was going to notice his blunder but no repentance came. "Okay." I whispered and went upstairs. I was about to turn into my room when I noticed that the office door was open just a crack. That never happens. I mean never. The curiosity was killing me. Dad wouldn't mind, right? After all, it was just an office. If there were really anything to be kept a secret, it wouldn't be in the house, right? I slipped into the room without a sound and felt around for a light switch. After a minute, I gave up hope on the light and just focused on the glowing computer screens. They burning my skin with their radiance, causing me to adjust my eyes before I could read the information that was beaming off them.

SUBJECT 509146 IS DISPLAYING SIGNS OF VITAMIN DEFICIENCIES AND MINOR MUTATIONS. SWELLING IN THE EYELIDS HAS NOT CEASED, SUBJECT COMPLAINS OF PAIN IN LOWER ABDOMEN AND CHEST. NIXODRIDE IS BEING ADMINISTERED TO THE SUBJECT FIVE TIMES A DAY. NO IMPROVEMENTS HAVE YET TO BE SEEN.

SUBJECT 710002 SUFFERS FROM VIOLENT, UNCONTROLLABLE MUSCLE CONTRACTIONS. HIGH DOSES OF ANTIPERSERAPHINE ARE BEING ADMINISTERED EIGHT TIMES A DAY. NO IMPROVEMENTS HAVE YET TO BE SEEN.

SUBJECT 482504 DISPLAYS UNSCHEDULED SLEEP PATTERNS AND SLEEP TANTRUMS. SUBJECT DOES NOT RESPOND WELL TO AMAPHINE, DIAPHINE OR REBOIODANT. IF SUBJECT DOES NOT SHOW SIGNS OF IMPROVEMENT BY SEPTEMBER, EXPERIMENT WILL BE COMPROMISED.

I kept reading but all the reports ended the same way. No improvements. Experiment compromised. Who were these subjects? What role did my father play in their development? What was any of this? What did it mean? What did I not know?

All the monitors went black. Complete darkness then… the whole room was lit by a ceiling lamp, bringing into view my unhappy father who stood by the obviously placed light switch. "What are you doing here?" he demanded.

Honestly, the whole thing had caught me off-guard. "I-I-I just wanted to see what was in here… th-this room is never open."

"That is for a reason. You are not allowed to be in here."

"I'm sorry! I was curious!"

"Curiosity, my son, is a dangerous thing. If not used correctly, it causes chaos." He walked towards me , putting his body between me and the monitors.

"What… What was all of that…on the screen?"

"That's none of your concern."

But I fought back. "What did it mean by _subjects_? Are these people?"

He stared down at me. "I suppose… you're at an age in which I need not lie to you. Yes, the subjects are people. They are my work."

"Wh…what do you do to the people?"

"Be careful of the questions you ask, my son. You'll only hurt yourself."

"Am I one of the subjects? Are you doing anything to me?"

He smiled at me, letting the silence build my tension. "Don't be ridiculous," He took my arm and led me to the door, "These tests don't involve you, they're all_ because_ of you." Then I was swept out the door and left in the hallway to battle my own confusion. Because of me? _What_ was because of me? How could I have caused something I didn't even know about and on that note, what was it that I supposedly caused?

I went to my room to rest my brain. This whole day had been far too adventurous for me. What's happening in the curvus camps? How much do the police men know about me? Who is Antonio? What will become of our scandalous relationship? What does my father do for work? What's happening to these subjects? What does it have to do with me? It was just too much. I fell into my bed and pressed my face into my pillow, wondering if I would suffocate. At least the lack of air was a good distraction from the hurricane of questions that was currently tumbling down on my brain.

I'm not sure how long passed, maybe an hour or two. I was disturbed by the oddest thing. Soft, timid taps of knuckle on my window. I opened it to find big, green eyes looking back at my own. I was tired and frustrated yet somehow, the idiot gave me energy to put up with him. After deciding that he wasn't going to go away, I opened the window.

"What are you doing?" I asked to the boy sitting on my roof.

"I consulted the experts," he informed me without a moment to waste, "And I've come to the conclusion that I am, in fact, madly in love with you."

"That was spontaneous."

"Yes, it came upon me spontaneously too."

"I see." I had been expecting something like this when I saw the way he was looking at me earlier.

"Did you know that? Did you know that I'm madly in love with you?"

"I had a hunch. I would have enjoyed your oblivion had it lasted."

"Would you like to know why?"

"I can't imagine that your reason is any good but it couldn't hurt."

"Here it is. I love you half because I am completely insane and half because you are completely insane. What is the point of being alive if I can't do something insane, right? Let me leave with a namesake. I need some proof that I ever was and more importantly, that I ever loved. I read it somewhere that love is a gentle wave. That's a lie. Love is an abyss. Only the most curious fall all the way to the bottom and once you're there, you never come out. Right now, right here, I am saying that I am in love with you and if you want, I'll make room for you in the abyss."

I think I might have fallen right then, maybe only half way, maybe only an inch but sure enough, I fell and it was enough to make me forget about my other worries. A little smile flared up on my face, challenging him, the courageous young lover. "Who are you to think that I would be so easily persuaded?"

He smiled back. "You haven't become any less difficult. Are you proposing a game, then?."

"I have no idea what you're talking about. Come around the front like a civilized human being." With that, I shut the blinds and went to open the front door, where I suspected he was already standing. Mother watched me from the dining room as I strode right up to the door and swung it open to reveal a young boy with a cheeky little grin and smiling eyes. He had changed from loose fitting reservation clothes into a proper city button up. Perfect disguise.

"Honey, who is this?" She smiled and stood, outstretching a hand to the stranger who shook it enthusiastically.

"Antonio Fernandez Carriedo." He boasted. What kind of a selfish bastard needs three names?

The two exchanged jovial greeting until I dragged the younger up the stairs and to my room. we sat on the bed. "So what's up?" I asked.

"Did you hear the part where I said I love you?"

"I did."

"What did you think of it?"

"Spontaneous."

"But do you accept or not?"

"May I remind you that you and I are strangers?"

"What has that got to do with it?"

"You barely know me. How do you know that I'm not everything you think I am?"

"I don't expect anything of you, Lovino, so I can't be disappointed. I will take you for your bare minimum. The rest is bonus."

"That ridiculous."

"Is it? I thought it was fairly romantic"

"It wasn't the worst you could do."

"So do you accept?"

"I don't accept things like that so easily. Mind you, I do have some self-respect."

"I can't understand your answer if it's longer than one word. Do you accept?"

"Don't ask me that question! I can't possibly answer it!"

"Yes or no?"

"You haven't the _right_ to ask me that! It's rude!"

"So it's a game?"

"What?"

"I'll woo you. If I win, you accept and promise to be mine and if you win, I go on imagining you in the stars for the rest of my life."

"Well, when you put it like that, it seems I won't have a problem winning."

"You accept the game?"

"Sure, whatever. Can we get on now with planning? It'll be nine o'clock soon and I have to get to bed."

"Yeah, of course!" We went on to explain the explicit details of his escape plan to me which were surprisingly well thought out. I'll spare you the boringness of its entirety. He would bring me food every night so I could build up a stomach and some white blood cells. We would meet on the reservation once a week, every week, for a month. That was the soonest we could possibly leave. On the last day, I would go in for emergency surgery to remove the chip and we'd set off. Antonio was taking care of most of it. He would hop the fence and burry necessary materials in several locations. I thought he must have been planning it through for quite some time now.

I had gotten involved in the conversation and therefor, stopped watching the time. "So then on the third week," he calculated, "We'll be at the third possible site of inhabitance. I've heard rumors that there's a town there but I don't know if-"

I never heard the end of that sentence. The clock struck nine.


	3. The Cat's Tenth Life

The Daisy Genocide

_The Cat's Tenth Life_

That night, I had a dream. I was at the park, the park where no children played and only a handful were crazy enough to be laying I the glass, wondering what shapes could be created in the clouds. I was walking for no apparent reason when I stopped to watch an elderly man trying to position himself on a pogo stick. I warned him that if he were to fall, he might break his fragile bones. "Yes, I know." He answered.

"Then why do you continue to play with it?"

"Well… because I am a very stupid man." He declared. "I am stupid so I will play with my pogo stick. It is such a lowly profession. It is such a remedial task and in the end, it will have benefited no one."

"You could do other things."

"You need not worry. You are one of the city people. You, my friend, are burdened with tasks of great consequence. Without you, who will discover the inner working of an electron cloud? Who will record the number of stars in the sky? Who will hypothesize the end of life?"

"You've named things that are all of no value. Electrons cannot be discovered, stars do not change when written in ink, and who will be around care about the end of life when such an event occurs?"

"That is not for a stupid man like myself to worry about. I will be content riding my pogo stick until the end of this meaningless life. People like you are the ones who will fuss over death and other such uncontrollable forces. I need'nt worry my stupid little brain about it."

"Well then, what makes your life any more meaningless than that of the city person who creates false answers for answerless questions?"

"The difference is that when I die, I will remember what a field a grass looks like. You would have to pick a single blade of grass out of the earth and set it under a microscope in order for the city person to recognize it. Even then, he may just call it _Plant, Pigment Green_. I would say, "That's a daisy, that's a sunflower, that's a tulip" and the city person would say "My time is too valuable to be wasted examining plants." When the sky roars, I would say "That is my savior, calling for me to return to the promised land." and the city-person would say "That is the expansion of rapidly heated air." That is the difference."

"You're not a very stupid man at all."

"Maybe I'm not. I'm too stupid to decide something like that for myself. That's why I stay out here and ride my pogo stick."

"That isn't true! You see life in a way that I'd never imagined!"

He laughed. "Life is a simple force. Even a stupid person like myself can understand what things are most important."

"What's that?"

"Well, the most important things in life are-" His sentence was disrupted by a mighty rumbling aroused from the grey clouds above our heads. I looked up to watch them, knowing that there would be no face of a ferocious lion but I wanted to see watch for it anyways. When I gave my attention back to the old man, he had disappeared. The rest of the dream consisted of my search for the answer. I asked everyone if they knew where the old man had gone but nobody seemed to recall his existence. I woke up without knowing what is most important in life.

My father was waiting for me downstairs, cueing me in on the fact that something was terribly wrong. I noticed the disappearance of his mustache. He was now perfectly shaved and I was caught off-guard by how sleek and manly his face had become. I greeted him with a nervous "Good morning."

"Good morning, Lovino. Tell me, the boy you had over yesterday, how do you know him?" He was not one to waste time with idle chatter, he never rambled about the weather or the neighbors, he despised things that were useless.

"Antonio? From the library." I answered. "Why?"

"No reason. He's an odd one, isn't he?"

I wish my father would just tell me the dirty secret that he was currently playing around. That day, I suppose, he was feeling especially lively. "Yes, he is."

"He left something for you." The man reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and withdrew a small, blue, paperback novel titled The Innocent Criminal. Antonio had mentioned something about it when we were talking.

I could tell that my father was not at all happy about this discovery, judging from his face of strict intolerance. "If you'll look here," He opened it to the inside cover where there was an obvious blankness, "You'll see that this book has not been approved by ARK. Do you see that?"

"I do."

"Which means that the context of this book is unreliable, damaging, and unacceptable for a civilized human being. Did you ask him to bring you this book?"

"No, I didn't! I didn't know!"

He shut it hard. "I will not tolerate such a work of silly nonsense in my house. This book consists of lies and thoughts that will corrupt a child's mind. Now say that you will never open a book like this."

"I will never open a book like that." I hastily repeated.

"Good. That is all then." He strode confidently over to the fireplace, lit the Ever-Burn Charcoal- which ignited instantly and burned with full fury- and tossed the book in without a second thought. My muscles tensed. The book was screaming and only I could hear it. I could see it writher in pain and shudder at the touch of flaming embers. Years of work and the souls of all who appreciated it began to sear. Every second it waited in flames, the tighter I felt my chest grow. The man picked up his brief case, and left for work, his presence in the house a mere spark.

The moment I heard the door click shut, I was in front of the fireplace, watching as The Innocent Criminal fought to resist the heat. I never bothered to _think_ about what I was going to do.

On instinct, I jammed my hand into the crisp, yellow flames but only managed to touch the cover before my brain jerked the arm away. I tried again, my mother screaming in the distance, but I couldn't grab the damn thing for longer than a moment. I ran into the kitchen and filled the mop bucket half way with sloshing water. My mother continued to yell but I ignored her. The things she had to say were not worth hearing. She would demand to know what I was doing and why and tell me that father would not approve. I blocked her out. All I could hear was the blood-curdling yelps of the white pages, each infused with dialog and poetry that desired nothing more than to be read. They begged me over and over not to let them die, to save them in time, to quench the unbearable heat with water. My heart raced.

The instant I poured the water, the room was filled with gushing tidal waves of thick, black smoke. I swatted the cloud away from my eyes but my vision remained close to none. Heavy coughs shook my frame. I swatted some more until it finally cleared. I forced my hand in and gripped it around the book. Don't be deceived by the water, it was still scalding hot. I felt nothing for the first moment but then came a boiling sensation in my flesh, each nerve ending stinging in pain, sticking to the book's skin. My brain shot signal after signal into my hands, telling them to throw it but I wouldn't. I shook the thing hard, trying to free it from embers hiding between its pages and maybe cool it with the air. I dropped to the ground, stomping, smothering, and kicking until it was cool enough to touch.

Mother was staring at me. She, above all things, was horrified. I had disobeyed father to save a book, an _unapproved_ book at that, from the fireplace with my bare hands and now soot was coating the carpet and my hands were a calloused mess. We exchanged a long stare, neither of us quite sure what just happened. "Don't tell father." I squeaked.

She nodded. She's a sad little woman who only ever expected to be the normal mother of a normal house hold. She never thought that her son would die and the next would be a criminal. She never thought that she'd be vacuuming the carpets while the son in questioned bandaged his hand and showered. She never thought she'd be keeping dark secrets from her husband, or questioning his whereabouts. She was a scared little woman, thrown into the middle of a mental battlefield . What was she to do? She'd already lost one child, what would people think if she lost the replacement? Why did this keep happening to her? Did she help her son in effort of keeping these things a secret from the outside world or did she turn him in and try again? When I came downstairs, she was just staring blankly at the wall, scooting the vacuum around with a droid-like blandness.

"Why do you need the book?" She asked flatly and slowly, not turning to look at me.

"I want to read it…"

"Why?"

"To enjoy it."

"That boy… does he read books too?" Her voice had not yet grown accusatory. She shocked and quiet.

I didn't answer. I couldn't incriminate Antonio. She shut off the vacuum and turned around, a stunned look on her pretty face. "What's happening?" Her nice blonde hair was just slightly frizzled and her big doe eyes just slightly pink.

"Nothing."

She frowned. "Tell me, Lovino. Please."

"It's nothing." People don't lie. They don't keep secrets. _It was against the rules_.

"So that's how it is, is it? The radio will know your fate before even I do. Boy found dead in reservations, runaway maniac captured, politia neutralized threat. I am not a stupid woman, Lovino. I didn't forget Marxi or Mill or the ten boys last month who were moved to the curvus camps. All of them thought that they were invincible. All of them played these silly games, read silly books, did silly things. Don't think that it'll turn out any differently for you."

"Then I'll be glad. All great people. All of them died as martyrs."

"Martyr to what?!" She demanded.

"Martyr to tomorrow! To a future where people will think for themselves and life is a game of chance! A future where people believe in a god just for the hell of it and they read and they can't get enough of it because knowledge is the sweet nectar from which the soul is nourished!" Those last words of my sentence were the last words to ever escape Marxi's lips. They were etched into my memory along with the image of him raising his fist and heroically revealing the lies.

"Have you ever thought that maybe it's better this way? Maybe people desire the kind of happiness that's offered in this simple life. In the old world, murder, rape, corruption, abuse, all of those things were just daily occurrences. Entire countries were plagued with war and starvation. Here, in this city, things are perfect. People are happy, _I'm_ happy and you should be too. We are protected from the evil ways of the old world. You don't understand how grateful you should be for the life that you are given."

"What life!? You mean the borrowed one?! The one I inherited –_stole_- from poor Feliciano!? Thanks, that's very generous. Now that you _gave_ me life, I'll go on my merry way, being a slave to his legacy. Thank you! By God, you're a saint! A fuck'n masterpiece!" She began to cry but I wasn't done. "But I'll bypass the greatest offense in my meaningless life so that I can tell you that this _happiness_ you speak of is nothing. You're not happy, you only think you are because everyone here is skating by on the bare minimum of what a generous person would call life, and you don't know any happiness greater than a contamination-free house! And, yes, the day may come when the radio reports the end of my sinful life but fuck it all, right? What difference does that make? One miserable existence can always be replaced with another, right? You'll make another right? You'll make sure this one is stupid, so he can never understand the incubated hell we live in. You'll make sure this one is allergic to paper so he can never touch a book. You'll suck every drop of life out of his body until he's the perfect, orderly, clone that you've always wanted. My only hope is that his lungs and his heart and brain never develop so that such a pitiful life cannot exist!"

The woman, so frail and weak, stood before me with her lips parted and a wet trail down each cheek. No words. No emotion that I could read. No movement. So long passed. The wall clock sent a resounding chirp through the house, drawing attention to the silent distance between us.

Finally, she smiled a nice little smile and opened her arms for me. I didn't immediately go into them. "Oh, Lovino. Every day you get a little bit taller, don't you?" She walked forward and hugged my confused form, now whispering against me ear. "You've always been so much fun, so cute. I remember when you were a little boy and you'd have me listen to that radio story with you. So cute. You're still my little boy."

She released me from the hold then started wrapping up the vacuum cord as if nothing at all had happened. Nothing at all. "Mom?" I asked.

"And you used to have this doll, do you remember that? It was a little dog of a funny color. What color was it now? I don't quite remember…"

"Mom!" She looked up at me, the pleasant smile still haunting her face. "I want to leave. I'm going to run away, I can't do this anymore. I can't live like this." There was no response. My heart ached from the surreal terror of her calm demeanor. It was like the world was not my own, like she had transported us to a world of happy carelessness, so far from the soot-covered, tear-stained reality that we had once inhabited. I was desperate to get a response from her. "_Do you understand_?"

I waited in silence. She appeared to be thinking very hard about something. "Blue." She finally said, the cheery smile making another appearance.

"What?" My eyes defied my orders and let a couple marbles of salty liquid escape. It couldn't be…

"That was the color of the doll. And it had a little star on its back. It was the cutest little thing."

"Mom?" I whined, my voice thin and unsure. She wrapped me in another hug and I slowly did the same. My arms were around a stranger.

"You're getting so tall." Was all she said.

It's the brains natural form of self-defense. When reality is too harsh and when the stress has become too powerful, it resets. It finds your happy place. That's when I realized that, just like my dream, my mother was riding her pogo stick, enjoying her simple oblivion and refusing to look past it. She would live forever in her fragments of perfection, her delusions of happiness. That's why I was crying. I realized that she was too far gone. She was a product of our society, never able to cry for Don Quixote or fall in love with Mr. Darcy or look at the stars and recognize their improbable significance that could possibly apply exclusively to her. Everything that I treasured in life was some inconceivable force that could never be understood or obtained.

My arms around her tightened and the tears increased. I'd lost her. She was all but dead now. "Allergy season?" Her peppy voice asked, her mind refusing to subject her to the truth. I nodded into her shoulder. "Why don't you go take some Zimiplex and lie down for a while, okay?" I mumbled an _okay_ and trudged upstairs. The chirping of the clock followed me all the way until I shut it out with my bedroom door.

I opened the bottled and looked in. It was about three-quarters full, approximately one hundred and fifteen red tablets remained unswallowed. I wanted to lock the door and force every single one of them down my dry throat. I imagined how the cold tiles would feel when I was collapsed on them, foaming at the mouth , my muscles burning as they spasmed in a wild fit. Then, I imagined laying there dead. I imagined my mother coming in to find a pitiful mess of a boy lying in a pile of his own bodily fluid. She would scream and cry and call the police. My father would come home while they were rolling me away and he'd ask what happened and they'd say, "He left a note. It said, I'm undoing your crime, you asshole." I'd like to point out that I am not depressed; I just think an awful lot about death. I dedicate twenty-percent of my time considering how and when I will eventually go. One day, I believe I contemplated this subject up to seven times an hour. The difference between me and a depressed person is that I can be happy with a considerable amount of effort.

I returned to reality and dumped the contents of the bottle down the toilet to avoid temptation. I want to live, as much as I avoid admitting it. I went to my room and began to read The Innocent Criminal as a way to distract from my own poisonous thoughts. I whispered the words to myself.

Henry Yeager always knew that men were difficult creatures and that in the end, only few managed to break even with their selfish and selfless deeds. He knew that because he, himself, was a man and he had known many other creatures like himself. He had been accused by them, judged by them, sentenced by them, and all the while he never distrusted their natural good.

That was a load of bullshit. Humans are nothing more frogs. If you threw them into a pot of boiling water, they'd jump right out and be rather upset that you had tried to turn them into stew. If you put them in the water and turn and turn it up one degree at a time though, the frogs might just boil themselves. That's what our society is doing and what a man named Adolf Hitler failed to do. He wasn't patient. He thought that, if the water was hot enough, he could do the job in one sweep but that's not how it works. You have to wait until conditions are perfect then ever so slightly, bring in the heat. Humans are not natural good, they are naturally sheep, longing for direction! They are meant to be led! Their resistances are so weak! I furiously shut the book and hid it under my pillow. I was furious that I had burned my hand for a stack of lies.

I stayed in my room until father returned home then I promptly got up and left for the library because I didn't want to be around him. I was too angry, I'd blow up and say something that would make my predicament severely worse. "Where are you going?" He asked as I neared the door. His words contained remnants of the morning's anger.

"To the library." I said.

"What's wrong with your hand?"

_Shit. _I had taken off the bandages but the skin was skin red and rubbery. I searched my brain for the quickest answer I could find. "Testing a theory about nerve cells."

"Really? Care to share?"

"I'm in a bit of a rush so-"

"Share." He said, this time he was not asking. We have a sharing policy in my house, a no lying policy.

"I was wondering how long it would take –if my hand were numb- to react to being burned."

"And how long was it?"

"Instantly."

"I see. And how did you numb your hand?"

"Buckets of ice." I could tell by the look on his face that these weren't innocent questions. He had something in mind, he knew how I burnt my hand.

"Did you try injecting calcium or potassium?"

"No."

"Well then, prepare yourself for trial number two." He straightened his glasses, a matter-o-fact man with little room for disobedience. That kind of cool composure made my stomach churn.

"I think I need to do some more research before-"

"Nonsense, boy. A real scientist does not fear the disappointment of a failed experiment. That is how we learn and improve. Buck up and let's have ourselves another try." He was off to retrieve the vitamin supplements before I could respond. I had a feeling that I should have probably run. I knew what was going to happen, I was getting punishment, but I didn't run because I wanted to prove to him that I was stronger and I didn't care what he would do. That said, I was mortified when he returned with two thin needles.

He injected both into the already injured arm and gave the skin a few light smacks to circulate the liquid. We both knew that even if they worked, they would take longer than thirty seconds to kick in. My father was the kind of man who did what he had to and named himself an honest, righteous man for it. He was, as our society would call it, perfect. Slick, dark hair. Symmetrical, clean glasses. Formally pressed suit to complement his nice-looking face. He walked swiftly over to the fireplace and lit the Ever-Burn coals. Mother left the room.

He called me over, patting his leg and calling "Here son" is his perfect, flat voice. The hair on the back of my neck stood on end, coated in cold sweat. I clenched my teeth. I soothed my shaking. I tranquilized my thoughts. It was just my dad, why should I be so afraid? Still, my bravest face was out shown by his sadistically uncaring one. He held my arm firmly with both hands and asked if I was ready. I nodded and in the next second, pain engulfed my whole body. My brain jerked my arm away as hard as it could but my father held it steady. It was hot like you couldn't imagine. My brain kept saying, "Stop, stop! Pull away! Stop!" but I couldn't. My mouth opened and I let out a pathetic, gravely , shriek, jerking harder and harder to free the limb that stung every time the sleek flames licked it. I ripped it out the moment it was free. Five seconds, I counted five. Just five. I'm fine.

The skin was, at first, not skin. It was a red mass of softly sizzling rubber, then I remembered what _used to_ be attached to the end of my arm. "Well…" My father said, looking down at it, "maybe next time. Don't get discouraged, remember, the wheel was not always round." That was a common saying in our city, meaning that many failed trails are the building blocks to perfection.

"Okay." I mumbled, completely in shock. I stared at it. I felt nothing at the moment.

"Remember, don't put ice on it." My father mentioned on his way up to his office. "Oh, and we're out of pain relievers too. I'll send in an order for more. It was the oddest thing. I thought the bottle was mostly full but I must have been mistaken."

It hurt. Pain was kind of a new thing for me. Being a privileged and protected city-person, I had never faced any real danger before. Damn, it hurt. The wrist faced small red splotches along with mild yellow discoloration but the hand that had been burned only hours before was a mess. I'll spare any further descriptions of my raw flesh. Dammit, it hurt really bad. The more time passed, the more it hurt. I wet a cloth and placed it on top, feeling immediate relief. In the back of my mind, I wished Antonio was with me. He would cry out and take care of it and say stupid shit that would somehow make me feel better. Then again, it would be humiliating. No, I could take care of it myself, I wasn't helpless. I feared helplessness.

I wrapped it after applying thick layers of ointment. It wasn't so bad, I told myself. It only lasted five seconds… or six. Or four or twenty. I knew better than to trust a panicked timer. I'd thankfully accept the brief pain of fire over seeing my poor mother reduced to stupidity. I thanked the stinging sensation in my hand for taking my mind off her tearful smile. I hated the memory of her staring at me blankly as her mind turned her back like a clock, silencing my words and tranquilizing her uneasy spirit. I hated the fact that she was a lamb, a product of our corrupted world. I hated that I couldn't save her.

My hand sent me a jolt of pain, diverting all of my attention again and I was thankful for that. I nursed it for a while and read An Innocent Criminal to pass the time. I didn't feel like going anywhere. The rest of the day was normal compared to the completely abnormal first half. Mother wanted us to share our feelings because "Things have been tense between you two". Neither of us had anything to say so mother tried to council me along. "Lovino? How have you been feeling lately."

"Bored. Nerve cells don't interest me very much."

"Really? Robert, how do you feel about that?"

He hated this as much as I did. "I feel like you're not trying hard enough. They are very complicated and important cells, there is nothing uninteresting about them."

"I think I'd prefer to study bacteria instead."

"Maybe you will in your free time but it is simply unreasonable to waste all the work you've done regarding nerve cells."

"That's not my work. It's Feliciano's. All those hundreds of papers were written and left by him."

"At this age, Son, you cannot be changing your studies on whim like a child. Everyday of your life prepares for your future and the futures to come." By that, he meant the next generations of Lovino.

I turned to my mother, frustrated to the point in which I was only angered more by the sight of my father. "Right now," I said with a calming sigh, "I am exhausted and my head is busy with many new thoughts. It's already eight-thirty. I'd like to be dismissed to prepare for bed."

"We're not done." My father interrupted. "Your mother set up an appointment for you tomorrow to see a councilor for troubled youth."

"That's right. Sweetie, your father and I are concerned about you. We think that you've been getting these…_ideas_. Ideas that fill your brain with silly little things that confuse you and make you act out. Tomorrow, you're going prepare yourself like a gentleman and be in the gathering hall by eight o'clock. Mrs. Digny, the group leader, is a very well respected woman. She has a way with children. With her help and the support of all the other children, we can put all these silly misshapes behind us. How… how does that make you feel?"

I shrugged. "I am no less exhausted."

"Your mother asked a question and I expect you to answer seriously." Father scolded.

"Ecstatic." I lied and bared my white teeth in a make-shift smile. My mother was pleased.

"That girl from next door will be there. She's a nice girl, she volunteered as a youth counselor. You ought to talk to her. You know, it's about time you started looking for a wife, she's make a fine mother too." Father suggested.

"I haven't spoken to her since I was a tike."

"No matter. What difference is there? It's best to find yourself a nice young lady now then to apply to be coupled later in life."

"But I hear they do a very good job in coupling. They pick very compatible people." My mother added for comfort.

"Alright. I'll speak with her." I agreed.

"Alright, Sweetie." She let a soft hand rest atop mine and smiled.

"I'll retire to my room now, if that's alright with you."

"Yes, that's fine. Don't forget, eight o' clock."

"I won't." I forced on least smile in return and left after I was thanked for sharing my feelings.

I looked into my closet and realized how absolutely hideous my wardrobe was. The clothes weren't all that bad but they were identical to the clothes of every other boy in the city. Seven shirts, all button-ups of simple colors. Green, light blue, dark blue, grey, yellow, brown and red. No one wore black. Black was a color of death, it was forbidden. Beside my shirts I had numerous slacks. My shorts were replaced at puberty, as were all the other boys' shorts. One front-buttoning jacket for snow, one poncho for rain and three night gowns of pale color. I was quick to put one on and wait anxiously for sleep to arrive.

Sleep came but didn't last. There was this incessant knocking on my window that finally roused me. "What do you want?" I demanded to the familiar child perched on my roof.

His smile was brighter than the sun, warming my insides. He wouldn't remove his intense gaze from my eyes. "Wow," he sighed, "They sure are gold." That cheeky smile quirked just like I liked it too. My face reddened. I invited him in so he wouldn't see.

I lit a candle and sat on my bed beside him. "What on earth are you doing here?" I asked the boy who's presence lifted the whole room.

"Wait…Are you wearing a dress?" He chuckled.

"It's not a dress. Only an idiot would say that. It's a night gown and every single city-person wears one because we are not as uncivilized as all you naked, bed-sharing naturals." I spat, defending the ankle-length cotton cover.

He laughed. The sound of it stuck in my mind, repeating over and over. "I like it much better than this. It's so lonely in here, I don't see how you can feel safe or secure when you sleep all alone in this little room. Who wakes you from your night terrors?"

"I wake myself, thank-you-very-much, because I am not some child who cannot even face his own ridiculous imagination."

"Do you want me to sleep here with you tonight?"

"No."

"It's fun, I promise. I share a bed with three of my cousins and the neighbor's boy, Hugo. I could wake you like I do Hugo when he begins to kick and cry. And I could hold you until you fall back asleep, like I do for him."

"I believe my mother might think I'm having an affair." I joked. That beautiful laugh returned.

"I am a gentleman." He argued.

"Who sleeps naked."

"What's wrong with that?"

"It's weird."

"It's only weird if we're not both naked. Then we're just people sleeping."

"I'm not getting naked. Talk like that would get you in trouble around here."

" Why is everyone so afraid of nakedness? I heard of a rule in the city that says that you may not be fully exposed for longer than five minutes. Even in your own dwelling!"

"There are bathing exceptions. Besides, It's not my job to question that amount of clothing that one is lawfully required to wear."

"The government here is weird."

"What's weirder is that it's practically nonexistent. The people create and abide these rules themselves."

"That reminds me! I left The Innocent Criminal here for you last night, did you get it?" I self-consciously hid my bandaged hand behind my back and refused to meet his curious eyes. I focused on my desk, pretending like there was a single interesting object on it, which there wasn't. "What? What's happened to your hand?" He tried to peek a glance. "Come on, Lovino, let me see it." He spoke with a twinge of nervousness and caution.

I revealed the shameful show of bandaged flesh, still refusing to meet his eyes. He demanded to know what happened and tenderly held the hand. "You should have known better." I murmured. "You should have known better than to bring a book here."

It took him a while but he finally managed to piece the bits together. "I-I didn't know… honest, Lovino. I didn't know…"

"Whatever. I doesn't even hurt."

"Can I see it?"

"I just wrapped it this afternoon."

"Then the bandages need to be changed. May I?"

I lifted my eyes to meet his. "You can if you _want_ to." I warned. "Understand that I am not undamaged and that by unwrapping that, you will see what's become of me. Do so with expectation of the product."

" 'Course." He answered unsurely.

"Fine." I produced a roll of gauze and ointment from the bedside table and handed them to him. He was so gentle, running his fingers over my skin like cold water. I didn't understand what he found so fragile. I had never been treated with such care, not even as an infant. "Antonio," He looked up, still unwrapping. "How do you feel about me?"

He looked back down to the hand, unfazed by the question. "I love you."

"Be more specific with your language, please."

He gave me his attention once more, displaying the crooked smile that I'd come to love. "How much more specific would you like me to be?"

"Well, there are so many forms of love. The kind of love a stranger offers an infant, the kind of love that bonds a family, the kind of love that people have for inanimate objects."

His lips met mine, even if for just a second. "The kind of love that keeps me awake at night and makes me contemplate everything over again. I spend my time wondering what you're doing and if you're happy doing it. I love you in the way that makes that stars envious."

My face became warm, my chest swelled, both familiar feelings by now. "Did you come up with that just now?"

"Hardly." He let out a short, breathy laugh. "I spend too much time coming up with things to say to you." He continued to unwrap the bandages with the same amount of delicacy.

"How do you know that you love me after such a short period of time?"

"I just know. When it comes to love, there's nothing to be questioned."

"Except the haste of your decisions."

"I wasn't going to wait to confess. What is the use in torturing myself? To seem unimpressed or indifferent? I resent those feelings. I don't deny myself the pleasure of loving you, Lovino Vargas. You're-" He stopped, finally revealing what was hidden beneath the bandages. I looked away in shame that I wouldn't admit. It was not the texture or color of human skin anymore, it carried with it a story of poisonous origin.. Antonio was quiet. He took his fingers and soothed them over the burning flesh in the same careful way that he had removed the bandages. He traced them up and down my tough skin. I ignored the pain and let myself accept how good his cold hands felt when they massaged the tender areas. It felt amazing. The skin was on fire, my nerves ached every time another pulse of immense heat was administered.

"How did this happen?"

I recounted the story, starting with my father finding the book and ending with mother's decision to send me to a troubled youth group. He had no immediate response other than to tighten his lips during certain parts. "You're okay?" He finally asked.

"I'm okay. I heal quickly anyways so I can still go through with the plan. It's not going to cripple me or anything."

"That's not what I'm worried about. Are you okay being _here_?"

"Of course I am! That's a ridiculous question! Of course I'm okay."

His vibrant eyes filled with sadness. "What's okay about _this_?" His gentle fingers continued to map the leathery skin.

"It's nothing. It doesn't even hurt anymore."

"Layers of skin don't disappear so quickly without a reasonable level of pain."

I shrugged.

"Is that all? A shrug?"

Another shrug.

"Lovino Vargas, you may very well be the loneliest person on this planet." He muttered, his voice drenched in the sadness that I felt but didn't express. He looked around my room. He saw my little bed, my generic wardrobe, my desk (currently covered with Feliciano's nerve cell reports), my lamp, my stack of textbooks, and nothing else. That was it. It was just me, desperately grappling onto the remains of a dead man, trying to live off whatever scraps of life that he left behind. It was just me… and the me I was trying to be. "Lovino Vargas, you are a being that is so painfully lonely that it deludes your ability to perceive love."

"So? What is that supposed to mean?"

"It means that you can stop now. Stop being lonely."

"One does not simply _stop_ being something. Especially if they're not that something to begin with." His eyes wouldn't suddenly spark back to life, like I had expected them to. "Come on now, quit that." My words had no effect on his state of depression. "Really, I'm fine. I'll be healed by the end of the week. You don't have to worry about it."

"It hurts, I know it does." His voice had changed, dragging along a gravel that indicated a swelling of painful emotions. God damn it, Antonio. I should have known he'd be a crybaby. "Don't do this to me. Don't be a clone. Say what you really mean."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?!"

"I want you to be the Lovino I knew yesterday who valued himself, who had beautiful words of pain and passion. The Lovino who refused to be an object for someone else, who didn't let his feelings be disregarded. The Lovino I saw yesterday wanted to be respected as his own person, he wouldn't allow anybody to mistreat him. He was strong. He didn't submit to authority, he wouldn't let himself be abused and say, "It's fine" My Lovino spoke with a tongue of fire. He used his words to fight wars meant for armies. Bring back that Lovino." The tear-jerked boy took my jaw in his hand and softly pulled it towards his own. Our lips connected. It was longer than a second, much longer. Filled with sadness and desperation. It was kind. Sincere. Loving.

We parted and were left staring, neither sure of our own thoughts. "-Love you." A little voice said, releasing the words so softly that they lingered in the air a while before finally resting around us.

I was surprised by them. Who had said them? Couldn't have been Antonio, he was just as surprised as I was. I knew they were said, I heard them echo in my memory. Was it… _me_? Did I say that? Why would I say such a thing? The longer I watched Antonio, the more sure I was that my voice was the one that had ignited. Why?

I mumbled a quick apology, seeing as that was the only thing I could do. "Don't apologize, don't apologize." His thin voice whispered in a way that soothed me into a tranquil state of BeingInLoveWithAntonioness which I am confident is a deadly epidemic. Did you mean it?" His soft voice asked.

I didn't answer.

He repeated his question. "Did you mean it? Your silence kills me. Just say something… be the Lovino that I know you are."

"I can't be any other Lovino. It's not possible. That's what my father wants to fix, that's what my mother wants to fix, that's what this whole god damn town wants to fix. I can't. And to answer your question, yes, it hurts, you idiot! It hurt when it happened and all the hours afterwards and it hurt when my mother went into denial and it hurt when I wanted to overdose and when I realized that my future was predetermined and when I couldn't have you right there to hold me and it _hurts_ god damn it! But that's life! Things hurt!" Now I was reduced to tears as well. "It hurts knowing that what I just said is true. That I love you. It hurts, okay? My dead-end life in this dead-end city is going to manage to suck you down with it and I hate that. I hate that you're a part of this. I wish you hadn't walked in on me reading two days back and that this wasn't happening at all." I cupped his warm, wet cheek. "Hurt can't even begin to describe what's going to happen."

He smiled and held my hand against his cheek. "There he is. My prince with the golden eyes." A tears raced down the wet tracks on his face. His smile only grew. "I'll accept the hurt. If you haven't noticed, I like things that are difficult."

"Yes, I know."

"Bring it back… I miss it. The smile I mean. It's been too long since I've last seen it."

"I do not smile on command."

"You will smile for a kiss?"

"No." I tightened my cheeks, repressing the smile that was currently growing.

"Maybe you will smile _after_ a kiss." So it began. We kissed and that led to more kissing and that, eventually, resulted in two people trying to lay in a bed meant for one, expressing what they could of their love for each other. Clothes were removed for the simple pleasure of looking at one another. Arms were tangled for the comfort of holding the other's drowsy form. Even as the night grew old, he was still there. His arms were still around me, his breath still on my cheek, his feet still tangled with mine. I laid still in his hold. "Nobody had believed me when I told them that I found the boy who could hold the entire universe in his eyes. They say that such thing is impossible and I say that they're probably right because I am selfish and do not want any of them to know of you. I want to be the one you tell your sorrows to, I want to be the one you show your smiles to. I want to be the one who holds you through the hurt."

"The entire universe? Why, you must be exaggerating. I've only ever counted a nebula or two."

"You didn't search as hard as I did. Sure enough, it's all there. Every star is accounted for."

"Well, maybe I ought to sell them. Blindness may be worth what science is willing to pay for a pair of universe eyes."

"You wouldn't!"

"I'd certainly consider it." His arms tightened around me, the sensation of flesh on flesh made me shiver.

"I couldn't stand never seeing them again."

"You could always have the lab produce them."

"That's impossible!"

"No it's not. They have a copy somewhere in the frozen ark. Even if they didn't, every geneticist in the world knows that such-n-such amino acids code for brown eyes."

"Brown!? Calling your eyes brown is like calling the ocean blue! They are not simply brown! They are every color of autumn. They represent the rust colored, maple-scented leaves. They are all the vibrant reds and pale yellows. They are all the warm memories of innocent children grappling onto thick branches and nesting in the leaves."

I grumbled. "I'm too tired to point out that a varied amount of pigment in my cells does not magically represent the stupid actives in which children take part."

"Fine, fine. Sleep if you want. But before you sleep…there is something I wish to tell you."

"Would it be impossible for you to save it until daylight?"

He laughed. "It'll be daylight soon enough."

"Tell me when I had finished sleeping."

"But it is like a painful shot, best administered in doses."

The word _painful_ enacted my attention. "It may be better if I never knew at all then."

"You fear knowledge? Knowledge is strength."

"Oblivion is strength as well."

"Yes… I suppose you're right. Make your choice then. Knowledge or oblivion."

That was the million dollar question. I knew too well what my answer would have to be, it was decided the day of Marxi's speech, in the words that swore me to pursuing his quest in his place. _Knowledge is the sweet nectar from which the soul is nourished!_ Damn him for saying such a thing, for persuading me, like always, to stick my neck out for the sake of knowledge. "How painful?" I asked and felt him shrug.

"Not excruciating but certainly not easy."

"How small the doses."

"Half now, half in the morning."

"You will do it quickly?"

"Surely."

I let my mind wander the possibilities. Maybe he only wanted to confess his fears of the journey we would both soon take. I suppose he could have already been assigned a wife, as so many incompatible people are. He could even be a father at his age. Maybe he was incurably ill (if there were such a thing) or responsible for heavy crimes. "Tell me." I finally decided. My guessing got me nowhere closer to preparing for the truth. I couldn't prepare for the truth, there was no way ii could be ready.

His arms tightened around me and his breath softened in preparation. Neither of these actions soothed me in the least. I closed my eyes and begged him silently to say whatever it was quickly. "I lied to you." He began. "I'm not a natural."

"Pomaig, then. Is that it?" I answered with confidence, thinking that was the end of it. I wish it were, that were easy enough to take.

"No, no… not that either." My stomach dropped when I realized what the boy was suggesting. I thought of, for the first time, the possibility of another group. Still, his voice never seemed saddened. I told myself not to worry to no avail. "I don't know what I am, not entirely that is. For so many years, I believed that I was natural born… then things began to happen… I began to _know_ things. And these things weren't things I had learned or been told, they came to me like words from a book, just there, waiting at my fingertips-"

"_Say it_." I demanded, shaken, afraid and especially frustrated at his reluctantness to state the fact. "You promised to make it quick, just _say it_."

He took a deep breath. "Lovino, my love…I think… I think I'm a successful experiment in the cloning of human memories."

The rehearsed words played over and over in my head, waiting until I was able to grasp the unfathomable meaning behind them. _Successful. Memories. Human. Human memories. Cloning. Successful._

The impossible  
had been done.


	4. Looking Directly at the Sun

The Daisy Genocide

_Looking Directly at the Sun_

Sleep never came to me. It never swept me up into its comforting embrace; it never released me from the catastrophic hurricane of thoughts that were driving me to insanity and back. My mouth never opened again, my eyes never closed, my thoughts never ceased. Antonio just held me and was silent himself. The night never ended. We lay there under my blankets and submitted to confusion.

At six o clock, I rose from my bed. The boy's limp arms slid off me when I stood. He woke soon after the relinquish of my warmth, I was shirtless when he lifted his head. "Don't look." I warned in a small voice.

"Should I leave?"

"You promised me the other half, did you not?"

He laughed to himself. "Honestly, I thought you'd want me far away from you."

I looked at him dead-on, my serious gold eyes met the green ones that had already assumed the worse. "How fickle do you perceive my feeling to be? Loving you is not as simple as admiring a fictional character. It cannot be ended with the flip of a page, although, I wish it were that easy."

"You don't hate me?"

"No, I hate you. But I don't love you less."

"Tell me about the hate, please, describe it."

I pulled on a shirt and slowly began the process of buttoning. "The hate? It burns, of course, but it burns only on its kindling. It won't live far too long."

"What is the kindling? What makes you burn?"

"The fact that you waited for my venerable nakedness to tell me, the way that this empire of genetic manipulation has reached into what I believed was pure, and the simple knowledge that the world is ending."

"Ending?"

"Yes, ending. With this technology, eternal life is possible. I always thought that man was naïve to think he had conquered death. I believed that there was hope because nature still ruled this planet but now the tides have turned. Humans, while intelligent, know _nothing_. They don't know nearly as much as they think they do. Putting them in charge of an entire planet is suicide."

"What hope is there for compassion? Humans are a species that learns and adapts."

"Answer me this. In ten years, a man creates countless bombs and places one on every single planet in all the universes, hoping that, with this technology, he will make Earth the greatest planet of all. Towards the final hours before detonation, he realizes the stupidity of this decision and regrets it terribly. He weeps and screams and begs for the universe to forgive him. Do you think that, in a matter of hours, he can undo years worth of destruction? Do you thing that, if he screams until his throat bleeds, that it will make his words any more powerful? Do you think that decades of sin can be washed away by one prayer?"

He got up as well and fixed the last two buttons on my shirt easily. "As you know, I am believer of lost causes. Of happy endings, of answers that exist without reason. I like to believe in unreasonable things."

I laughed. "I remember."

"An angry person doesn't laugh." He mentioned with a smile.

"I'm laughing because I'm thinking about you with your hands folded together, asking the sky for things you'll never get. I imagine you as a child, asking the clouds for a new pair of shoes."

"Not at all! I believe in perseverance for the right causes at the right times. We will be strongest when strength in needed most! The sun sets so that it can rise at dawn!"

"You've gone soft."

"But it's all true! Humans are stubborn learners but once they make a habit, they keep it! Don't you remember?"

"Remember what?"

"Bite your tongue once and it hurts, bite it again and it stings, bite it again and you weep but bite it once more and you learn to speak carefully." It was a quote from my favorite book, the one named Amelia. Colonel had said that line to Lacey as she cut her hand again on the thorn bush. Eventually, she did learn the delicate care that was required when handling roses. That didn't convince me that humans could save themselves, though.

"When will you give me the other half?" I reminded him. "Before my parents find you here, I hope."

"You won't need to recover? I don't expect you to weather the storm in one try. Maybe I'll tell you a bit tomorrow and a bit on the next day and then-"

"Tell it all to me now and I'll take it piece by piece throughout the day."

He let out a sigh. "That's for the best, I suppose. I wanted to tell you all at once, the whole story. Only… it's a long one." He pulled his shirt over his own chest. The heat in the room diminished by a degree or two. I took a deep breath and gave him my full attention, not nervous of my mother walking in, she was expecting me to be busy preparing myself for my eight o' clock session with the troubled youth.

"There's something that happens." He began. "There's this bank of memories in me that aren't mine, and they make themselves known one by one. The first time it happened, I though I must have just tapped into an unknown wealth of creativity. I told my mother and she scolded me for using my imagination in destructive ways."

"What happened?"

"The first time? I was a tot, only a few feet height, and I was prancing around in the silly way that toddlers do with their friends. Nobody on the reservation ever minds much, the children run around, having their own secret lives, and return home when their mothers order them too. I was one of those children, possibly the most adventurous of my generation. I loved to eat, too. I would have a taste of all the flowers and tree bark I could find. One day, I went to our neighbor's porch, where she used to leave out her milk to cream. Me and my friends, we would secretly dip our fingers in while nobody was looking and eat the top bit. I remember, I was just about to go in for some when I was swept off to this film of an experience not my own. I wasn't even on the reservation, but it was to quick and real to be startling.

I was looking through eyes that weren't mine, they were seeing thing that I never knew of. They watched as a young girl, about my age, maybe a bit younger, clenched her stomach and hurled repeatedly. The original memory-maker, the one I was standing in for, he scolded the sick girl. He had told her before not to leave milk out in the sun. He kept saying that he had told her before, and that –if she had listened- she wouldn't be in this situation. She continued to hurl.

I woke up in only a second. It was so brief, just a spark really. I was so afraid that I kicked over the bucket and sent the thick liquid running all along my neighbor's porch. Needless to say, my mates were angry, the neighbor came out and slapped each of us on the backs of our heads, and my mother ordered that I'd clean that porch every day for a week. I was so sore about the whole situation." He was able to laugh about it now.

"How many times has it happened since?" I asked.

"Countless. I had memories of things that I had only ever read about. I could remember bodies of water so large that ships had to be built to cross them! And I saw concerts, and parties and marriages. They weren't always good memories. Once, it was raining especially hard and I remembered a flood that sucked the air out of so many throats. I was playing with my friends, hiding from the one elected seeker in a shallow trench behind the shrubbery. In one instant, the bushes became rounds of sharp knives. It smelled of rot and mold and blood. I made the mistake of looking around to where the bodies of dead men lay. Rats the size of cats scurried around, swarms of gnats hovered above the lifeless forms and guns, _hundreds of them_, rattled as they shot countless bullets."

"Oh my god…"

"Don't get me wrong, I knew good memories too. I knew memories of high-rising palaces fast car rides. Bit by bit, I lived lives outside my own. But… I never knew why. I never understood why I had this ability that seemed to be an exclusive privilege."

"Maybe you're delusional. You don't know that any of these things are true memories."

"I hoped that was the truth but when I researched some of these happenings, they checked out. I envisioned an artist once, I saw him paint a piece that I had never seen before! I saw it later in a book, too. I saw a priest who recited a bible verse to me with word-for-word accuracy!"

I was, like I was many other times, at a loss for words. For something like a century, I stood in silence and watched the tan-skinned boy who just waited, lips parted, expecting me to do something. I was kind of angry at him for that. How could he expect me to react after that kind of information? Did he want me to say that I understood because that was a lie. Did he want me to say I was angry with him because I wasn't. I was confused and in love. The combination of those two is a speak impediment.

"I say you once…" He confessed. "In a memory."

"Me? You saw _me_?"

He nodded and swallowed hard.

"Who's memory?"

I don't know. It…it feels kind of intrusive…"

"What did you see?"

He averted his eyes guiltily, as if he had _meant_ to see into my personal life. "I saw you… years ago, you were so small, really just a little scrap. And…there was a man on the ground, he wouldn't move. And you were just so small, it broke your little heart, I could see…and you cried so hard. I didn't think a little boy could be so sad. It's still here, in my head. I wish it weren't, though. I can't stand that screaming, it's so sad." That was enough for him. He squinted his eyes shut and looked away, my image hurt him.

"His name was Marxi." I said in a whispering voice. "He was my best friend…"

"I had seen him before too. It was one of my favorite memories. I saw him slyly grab a book off the shelf in the library and take it to the back corner where he proudly marked these three lines on the inside cover-"

"Freedom is bliss, death is life, knowledge is strength." I recited, the words forever stored in my memory.

He smiled a bit. "Yeah, that was it."

"What about me? Did you ever see me again?"

"Quite a few times, actually. More than I see anyone else or maybe… I just remember you more. I remember seeing you as a little tot, having a night terror. You woke up fearful and turned to the old dog that was asleep beside your bed and you heaved him up onto your bed with the little strength you had then you curled up next to him and fell asleep. It made me laugh and yet… I felt sorry for the lonely boy. No one was there to stroke your back or groom your head. It was sad, I wanted so badly to scoop you up and do it myself. And I saw later that the lonely tot grew up to be a lonely child who woke himself from bad sleep and looked to no one for comfort… it makes me sad."

"There were more? You saw me _more_? How much?"

"A few times. But they were all strong memories. Very vivid, full of emotion. For example, I saw you once when I was young. I didn't know it was you at the time, you were barely there. It was snowy. The original memory-maker, the "me", was kicking a boy who had fallen on the ground. He was the same dark-haired activist one, he was tucked into himself, his nose bled. I remember in the corner of my eye. You cried and watched. One of the attackers yelled something at you, and the activist, Marxi, yelled at them to leave you be. He was furious, he cried."

"Then what?" I demanded. I felt myself invigorated, feeling like Marxi was reborn for just a minute.

"I don't have anything else. That's all there was."

"Oh." My eyes fell. "Okay."

"Was that you in the memory?"

I nodded. "It was December, just the beginning. We were walking along and he was telling me a funny story about some president that had lived long ago. I don't remember what it was, but it was funny and we were both laughing." My own memories came back to me, bringing me fondness and pain. I remembered that day. Him strolled along, his hands jammed into the pockets of his crumby knit jacket. He was a tall, lean, boy with pale skin and unforgettable blue eyes.

"Did you love him?"

"Is this jealousy I see?"

"Just wondering…"

I thought. When I thought about Marxi, I saw his rebellious spirit, his quirked smile, his stringy black hair, his thirst for knowledge. When I thought about Antonio, the first thing that came to mind was that gentle smile followed by the emerald eyes that pierced through mine without any trouble at all. I saw the way he admired my fight, his child-like, leg-crossed sitting style. I saw him hold up a book enthusiastically and treat it like a precious treasure. I saw him hold my hand with confidence and later, he held my entire body closely beside his. Lastly, I heard his rich laugh, making my heart race. "I loved him." I concluded. "But not the same way I love you. I loved him in the way that I wanted to follow him and make him smile. With you, it's not a matter of want but need. I _need_ to follow you or the emptiness is crippling. I _need_ to make you smile because when I can't see it, I relapse and insanity follows . It's an addiction?"

He nodded, a shy smile on his blushing face. He gives praise so easily but can't take it. I loved that about him. "You're without trousers." I mentioned. He blushed harder and found them buried under the sheets. "To think, _you_ were the one who claimed himself to be a gentleman." I teased.

"But I_ am_ a gentleman!"

"Gentlemen leave when asked."

"But you haven't-"

"Please leave."

"Are you angry with me?"

"No." I answered with a smile to reassure him. "But I have an appointment to make and in all honestly, I need to think. Alone."

"But you wouldn't send me away without a kiss, would you?"

"I think I would. I might."

"You would kiss me if I were dying though."

"Well, it's a good thing you're in perfect health."

"Am I!? I think not! Look at me again and this time, look closer. Tell me what you see."

"I see a horridly romantic boy leaning against my window, in danger of falling out of said window."

"Not only that. If you look closer, you will see that I am actually dying at an infinitesimally slow rate. Blink your eyes and you will miss nothing but blink them a million times and I may very well be gone. You see, I haven't the slightest idea how long I will live. I've managed it for nineteen years now and to me, that sounds like I've only managed to put off the inevitable for nineteen years. Who's to say that the kiss you're about to give me, and you _will_ give it to me, will not be last? Keep I mind, I do not have the luxury of promising you a tomorrow."

"Are you trying to threaten me with your own life?"

"If you see it as a threat, then yes, I suppose I am."

I smirked. "I'm sorry but, after all, I'm just a child. I wouldn't know how to kiss an adult like _you_."

"Me? An adult? Hah! Never!"

"If your are not an adult nor a child, then what do you call yourself?"

"A dying man who yearns for his vice."

"His vice?" I moved closer to him. "I'm listening."

"Poetry is my expertise."

"Go ahead then, woo me. Or at least, try."

"Alright. To my dearest Lovino: You are so small." He laughed. "Born small? Maybe. Grew small? Possibly. Lived small? _Never._ You have never showed any intention to live a centimeter less than Socrates and Aristotle. You do not see yourself fit for anything but exactly what you deserve. _That_ is what I love most about you."

"I don't see that as poetry so much as an attempt at flattery."

"It didn't work?"

"It was closer."

"How about this then? A boy and another boy in the woods, meeting each other for the first but also hundredth time. It is like an infant meeting the world. Though they treasured the warm silence of the womb, they cannot turn away from the world once they have laid eyes on it. They-"

I fulfilled his wish for the pleasure of shutting him up. His mouth ran like nobody had ever seen. If I never kissed him, my life would be completely filled with these spontaneous poems. It was really more for myself than him. We parted, his childlike smile still slipped over his face. "I really shouldn't pity you so." I told him. "You don't obey any of the standard courtship procedures."

"Procedures?"

"_Yes._ It may be all willy-nilly on the reservation, people mating like rabbits and all, but here there are rules so that courtship is patient and careful."

"Hah! I laugh in the face of rules! But you'll tell these silly rules to me so that I may court you like a proper gentleman."

"First of all, you do not visit your "Dimidium" at their home until month two and you _certainly_ do not get into their bed." People had stopped using the words boyfriend and girlfriend long ago, too objective.

"That aside, tell me how I start."

"Start? Well… you meet the person… then propose courtship to the dimidium and if accepted, you make an official declaration to the legal guardians."

"So complicated! I don't have time to follow this silly process!"

"It's not silly! It's my culture!"

"Fine. How long does the whole debacle take?"

"Anywhere from five to fifteen years."

"Jesus!"

"What!? I suppose on the reservation, they just open their legs and wait for someone to come by! If that's what you're accustomed to, keep it your pants. Sorry to disappoint you."

He became upset with my remark. "Those are lies spread in the city! I may come to your bed and hold your body but I wouldn't dare defile you, it's not like that. Naturals are the same as pomaigs, no more barbaric. We, too, have a courting process. Granted, it doesn't take so horridly long and I'm sure it's not so stiff but it is honored."

"As do we here. The length ensures a quality relationship. A commitment like that greatly decreases the amount of broken-hearted people moping about. Imagine, if people could just sleep around, steal hearts, and run off like dirty thieves. Our system protects those gullible, pathetic people who fall in love so easily. "

His hand gripped mine with firm strength. "Is that what you're worrying about? That I'm not here for commitment? That I would take advantage of you and back out on all our plans?"

"I didn't say that."

"Lovino, you don't understand how easy you are to read." Arms wrapped around me slowly. "Tell me what is you want me to do." He whispered into my neck. "Tell me the rules, I'll follow them, I promise. Whatever it is that makes you feel comfortable."

"I guess… you could declare courtship." He released me from his hold.

"Of course! I hereby declare courtship!"

"Idiot, that's not how you do it. You have to… I'll show you." I went over to my dresser and found the thin faded blue ribbon that I had found in the dirt when I was younger. "I, Lovino Vargas, second son of Lucy and Domenico Vargas , would like to formally propose courtship to you, Antonio…"

"-Fernandez Carriedo."

"Fernandez Carriedo, son of whoever your parents are. I will now present you with this ribbon of blue, symbolizing a bond between us to be pursued for the hopes of marriage. Do you accept?"

"What do I do with it?"

"I don't know. Usually, the girl will use it to tie back her hair and the boy will string it to his belt loop. We haven't had a gay man here in… over forty years and he never partnered. Belt loop I guess?"

He put it on with a smile. "I don't have one to give you right now but I'll be back tonight. Can I bring you one then?"

"Sure. That's not even my real one."

"What?"

"I found it. Everybody gets one at birth and when the child hits puberty, it's given to them and the nature of reproduction is explained. Mine's downstairs, we have a special box for it but my parents would kill me if I gave it to you. Besides, I think they're going to give it away real soon."

"Why?"

"If a child is having a long streak of rebellious behavior, parents will usually try to marry them off pretty quickly. Marriage really settles someone down, y'know?"

"You're getting married!?"

"_Courting_! I'll probably be _courting_ a girl soon."

"Don't you have any say in this!?"

"What does it matter? Saying no will raise suspicion and saying yes will be a good way to buy time for a month."

"But still-"

"It's fine." I touched his cheek softly, an unusual sign of affection. "It's fine, it's fine, I promise." I pressed a kiss on his forehead and with my other hand, I pushed his chest teasingly against the window. "You better get out of here, boy, before my mother wonders who I'm talking to."

He finally gave in and smiled. "I'm going to be keeping my eye on you. Don't let some stranger hold your hand and _please_ do not bore them with your talk of human rights and unsynthesized happiness."

"I believe you're the only person on this Earth who is actually interested in listening to my hateful rambling."

"How could I not be? I find boredom in the girl who thanks god for her daily bread and complains about nothing. I love the way you expose the truth with righteous valor, how you know that you are meant for more than this mediocre life. I love your stubbornness, I love your unwillingness to give up a better future, your unwillingness to be subservient to anyone."

"Hush! I'm not letting you stay a minute longer, your flattery is useless." I pulled him far enough away from the window so that I could open it and usher him out.

"Oh, my cruel Lovino. Do you think you might make your way down to the birch trees by noon? I'd pack a lunch for you and me, a good one that you'd like very much."

"Away!" I cried.

"Bid me farewell with Shakespearian poetry, my fair!"

"Out!"

"Curse at me with the words of Salinger, my love!"

"Be gone, you parasite! Nuisance of the worst kind!"

"Oh, my sweet! I long for-" I shut him up by pulling down the glass pane that created a sound barrier between us. He preached on for the next few minutes, despite my eye-rolling, but I stood and watched him for the humor of it.

I smiled as I watched the fool but I could only do it half-heartedly. My mind was still gripped in the haunting confession that he had made last night. But I smiled for him and took steady breaths, not alerting him of the stiffness in my spine and the cold sweat beading on my neck. The uneasiness was something I felt most of my days. Nature was flipped onto its back and forced into submission and _we_ were the product of this endless war between man and forces stronger than man. Everything was wrong. The blood that ran through my veins was poison, every rule of the cosmos forbade my existence. Antonio too. In what seemed like simple innocence was housed a universe-shattering secret.

_My bones ached. __**They ached**__ because they were never meant to be in my body. They were a sin. An evil-doing. A crime committed by the humans. They ached and as I watched Antonio press a quick kiss to the glass before leaving, they ached even more for his sake._

I couldn't finishing dressing myself, I was too consumed wallowing in the same depression that consumed most of my thoughts. I wondered if I was selfish for wanting to live. Every breath I took was stolen from my poor brother and every moment I stood on this planet, I only worsened the damage. I should be doing what I can to cushion the blow, take one less sin from the debt. For the longest time, I wasn't even alive. There was no record of a Lovino Vargas on anyone's tongue, I was just another organism wandering around in my heard. Antonio was the one who changed that. He was the one who remembered me and defined me from my brother. He was the one who made me someone of value, an individual, not just a clone. Antonio was the one who gave me something to lose. If alcohol were legal, I'd probably drink some just about then.

I had my fill of depression after a few minutes and decided that I had other things to attend to. I groomed myself as expected, a neatly pleated blouse tucked into smooth, black trousers. I put on my nice leather loafers, one of three pairs of shoes that I owned along with my day sneakers and house slippers. My hair was combed, my teeth brushed and my pleasing features evaluated. It's a good thing to do, my father used to do it for me when I was younger but now it's something I decide for myself.

First, you consider the overall symmetry of the face. Nine. My face had always been especially appealing, people said it was a kind of beauty give only by true nature and that a luck like mine could be found in no ark. It had earned me both admiration and teasing as a child but my father had advised me to take pride in it because someday, it would be as handsome as his.

Eye color next, one. My worst feature. Father had always said that eyes should have a decided color, _that_ was most beautiful. My eyes had not one but six or seven or twelve colors in them, possibly some of the worst eyes ever conceived. My father had blue eyes, light blue, clear and steady. Just blue. Mine, like Antonio had pointed out, could very well have contained a whole universe. Unruly, unstable, imperfect.

Nose, 7. Very regular. Mouth, 5. My teeth were straight but my lips were pale and because of that, seemed feminine. Cheeks, 5, still ripe with baby fat. Overall, a fine young man if not slightly slow to mature. Father walked me to the gathering hall when the time was right. Inside the hall, chairs were set up for the youth to sit in and think about all the rotten things they had done. The leader, , was obviously a natural. Her physique ran heavy, her left eye grey with cataracts, her hair thinning in a small crown around her head. She hadn't the money to have those things touched up in a lab or the genetics to prevent them. I took a seat quietly.

The girl who sat beside me was enveloped in her own activities as if she were the only person in existence. She stared down at an image she was sketching with complete oblivion As I watched her, I couldn't help but feel that I had seen her before. Her pale, round, face and her long, thick, lashes both called out to me with striking resemblance. But to who!? Thick, wavy, brown hair and long, thin, neck. I knew her from somewhere!

I watched her scribble away with pen on her small heap of papers. "You seem familiar." I mentioned in a hushed voice, looking for a reason to strike up a conversation. Her bright face lifted and she giggled ever so slightly.

"You're right, I am familiar. But I'm not in the business of reminding people what they ought to have remembered. Take a guess, where do you think you know me from?"

I studied her face. "The library? Maybe?"

She laughed at the idea. "Not even once! You're such a stickler for books! I remember how people would complain that you'd read all day and that it wasn't the slightest bit interesting."

"The pool, then."

"Never been there."

"What? Why? Everybody swims at the pool!"

"I didn't. I refused to stay in the woman's pool, I always wanted to go play with the boys but mother said I couldn't so I refused the sport altogether."

It hit me. "Rosalind! I remember you!"

She laughed her charming little laugh. "Nice to see you again, Lovino."

"It's been so long, a few years, I think."

She nodded. "After what happened to Marxi, you shut everyone out. I guess you just didn't want any more friends."

"No… I just…"

"Needed time to heal. I understand." She glanced me over. "You were shorter when I last saw you, you looked so much more like Feliciano. It's nice to see that you've adapted an identity of your own."

"What an odd thing to say…"

She sighed. "I know, I know. I'm crazy, that's why the send me here. They say I have an identity crisis when it's the complete opposite. I want an identity. Unlike the original Rosalind, I haven't a scientific bone in my body. I have pictures in my head, that's the hand I was dealt. I make art."

"Can I see?" I glanced over the paper on her lap where her hand remained poised with a pen.

"Of course." She gingerly picked them up and handed them to me. Almost instantley, I became aware of the lack of clothes on the subjects. Nudes, I believe they're called. She took notice of my bafflement and took them from me with a smile.

"I'm not ashamed to draw humans in their nakedness. I shouldn't be, it's the skin we're all born with and because of that, I find it the purest form of our existence. I like to draw people like this because there isn't fear. No one's afraid of themselves, no one's threatened by their neighbors, no one is secretive or greedy. These are the kinds of humans that I wish we could all be."

"Naked?"

"No." She laughed. "Just bare. Bare of our shields."

"You know… you're going to get in trouble. You can't just make pictures of naked people here, not with people watching."

She looked around the room. "I'm already in trouble, I don't mind tempting fate a bit more."

"You _are_ crazy."

"But so are you. I saw how you read, you love the written word. I saw how you followed Marxi's every footstep, how you admired him so. You are the rebel, the joker. I wouldn't be surprised if you were over that fence by the end of the week." She touched my bandaged hand that I had almost forgot about. "And your father knows, I see. He's always been the kind for harsh punishments, one and done, that's his way. My mother never did more than smack my rump but Jill's mom, you know Jill, she was the more typical parent. Usual things, slap to the wrists, hair pulling, ice baths. Burning is rare, it takes too long to heal."

I shushed her incessant blabbering with a sense of panic. "Wait- You know about the fence?"

"Of course."

"How?"

"I went into the reservation for paints."

"You went in?"

"Yes."

"Don't you know you couldn't been caught!?"

"Relax, Lovino. I wore a scarf on my head like one of the natural girls. They didn't suspect a thing."

"I can't believe you!"

She laughed to herself, unoffended by the rudeness of my tone. "Mr. Vargas, don't think I don't know exactly what you're planning. Vargas has always been one who hungers for adventure and seeing that you're tall enough to climb over now, I'm sure there's not a minute that passes that you don't plan your escape."

"I'd feel a lot more comfortable if you stopped such talk or even just kept your voice down."

"So it's true?"

"No." I lied.

"Who is your ally? You must have one. Spare the name!"

"I don't! _Please_, Rosalind, _silence yourself_."

"Okay, alright." She smiled knowingly. Damn her, I never remembered her being so sneaky. But, I suppose, I recall her being an especially vocal young girl, always wanting to get her way and fussing when she didn't. "Have I embarrassed you? Your face is red." She chuckled. "Always red, even when you were young. I remember teasing you, saying you were a fevered baby. Y'know? Always red-faced, always thinking about a girlie he fancies. Is there a girlie you think about, Lovino?"

"No."

"Never been one for romantic affairs, have you?"

"No."

"You never notice a girl teasing you in that way that young girls tease young boys?"

"Girls like you are a danger to be teased by."

"Me? I'm not teasing you, boy. You're too cute for my like. Did you see this?" She pulled away her collar a bit to reveal the silver ribbon tied around her neck.

"I see you've found someone tolerant enough for schemes like yours. I don't know how you managed."

"It was my parents. They thought I should start courting, maybe be a woman of family since science never took to me. They found Jacob for me. He's the stiffest boy you've ever met. He keeps his hair combed back and his spine straight, he's funny, he really is. And I need him. He keeps me tied down, Y'know? He's good for me."

I knew but I didn't tell. I held my tongue tight, careful not to say a word about the boy who remembers. "I suppose I'll start courting soon too."

"That poor girl better be prepared to have her heart broken."

"You misjudge me."

"No, I know exactly who you are. You're a gentle one, softer than a lamb but you protect yourself with your bitter temper and god knows that no chains could ever hold you down."

"Maybe I'll find myself a girl who likes just that."

"Judging by the light in your eyes, I'd say you already have."

My face became flushed just in time for to interrupt. "Please children, I'd like to have your attention now." She called.

She smiled a pudgy little smile and clasped her hands together. "Now, I'm , I'll be you counselor for the next hour and a half. I want you all to feel safe here, we won't judge you. I'll start by introducing myself." She continued by reciting her sad life story in which she was bullied for her imperfections as a child so she put on weight and became a very bitter teenager who then committed several crimes like destruction of property and swearing. I had a feeling we weren't on the same boat. I, on one hand, I was reading illegal literature, housing a non city-registered natural _who was not formally courting me_ in my bed and scheming to undermine the whole community while she had reduced to petty theft.

She asked us to go around in the circle and introduce ourselves. The reason we sat in a circle was because, if someone started crying, we could all see them clearly and realize how crumby this whole thing was. Anyways, the introductions proceeded. I didn't know anyone other than Rosalind so I didn't bother to pay much attention until it finally came to my turn. I stood. "Hello, My name is Lovino Vargas."

"Could you tell us something interesting about yourself?" prompted.

That was a hard one. "There isn't anything much interesting about me." I decided.

"Now, Mr. Vargas, that's not true! Just think of something, something you like, something you made, a fun story?"

Everything special about me was either illegal or granted to me by a certain green-eyed boy. "My brother is dead." I finally said. In this society, that's what people remember, it's always followed by an awkward silence so I take the opportunity to explain. "My parents commissioned me instead because they thought I would fill his place and it would be like he never died but he _did_ die so that plan was flawed from the very beginning. Now I'm here because they don't like the Feliciano I turned out to be." No one ever knows what to say after that so I sat back down.

"Well… … thank you for your…_feelings_." Needless to say, she moved on rather quickly. Rosalind was the first to shoot me a teasing glare.

"Now, , let's not be so forward with our _feelings_." She mocked in a whisper.

"Mind your own." I scolded.

She buried a laugh in her hand and went on watching the procession. I ignored the rest of it. Mrs. Dingy would ask a question like, "Could someone share a time they disobeyed their parents and then felt sorry about it afterwards?" or "Would anybody like to tell us of a time when they lied or withheld information from a friend and it hurt the relationship?" Some poor say would own up, sobbing, and recall a memory of pathetic proportions. This went on until half of us were planning their suicide and the others were rubbing backs of their crying comrades.

It ended later than expected, much later. I had time to stop off at home, tell my parents that I was cured, then run back out to meet with my secret dimidium for a lunch that I was not legally obligated to consume. Never the less, he was there waiting, even when I arrive fifteen minutes late. "You had me worried." He said in greeting as he spread jam over bread. I sat down beside him on the blanket he had laid down.

"You? Worried? I hardly believe that."

"It's true. I worry about those politia, I don't like them one bit."

"Nobody does."

"For good reason. They follow their own rules, very shady people. One day, I'll have no idea where you are and I'll just to assume that they did something with your remains."

"That day is not today." I reached for a piece of bread, ready to take my first bite when a tan hand stopped it.

"Woe there, you're not ready for that. You stomach has been going on sanitary liquids for years. The goal is just to work you into solids, get you to keep something down. This is for you." He handed me a slightly deluded bottle of water.

"What is it?"

"Exactly what it looks like, a slightly deluded bottle of water."

"No shit. What did you put in it to delude it?"

"That one's peach, it's a fruit. I squeezed some of the juice in it."

"Are there others?"

"Mostly just peach, it's in season right now. I have one that's water from the river and also one with mint."

I took the bottle. "Oh yeah? So how long do you think I'll be drinking pulp?"

"A week maybe. Then it's mash and bread for you."

"Can I have just a bite of your bread?"

"You'll throw it up."

"Can I just taste it?"

His lips smashed against mine, delivering the bitter and sweet sensation that came with the jam. I made a disgusted face when he pulled away but I was actually enthralled by the new sensation that trickled up my tongue. My taste buds were so unused that what I was able to get from just a second-hand taste was explosive. I _felt_ every flavor of the thick, purple spread. It stung, but it also comforted. I rubbed against my lips over and over my lips to savor the new world Antonio had provided. "What do you call it?"

"Toast."

"I mean the spread."

"Boysenberry. It's a rather bitter-"

He never got to finish, I was addicted. I grabbed his head and hungrily searched his mouth for more, learning and discovering new sensations that I had never known existed. He protested with a startled umph but accepted soon enough and let me have my way. I let go of him when I realized that I wasn't breathing and I really should be. The boy blushed. " More" I demanded stubbornly. "Give me your bread."

"Don't you think someone would catch on if you _threw up solid matter_? Stick with your water bottles for now, they taste good too. Though… if you want to kiss…"

I ignored him for favor of unscrewing the bottle and taking a deep chug. The flavor was there but it was subtle. Not as potent as the jam that I still yearned for. I got half the bottle down before capping it. Antonio asked what I thought of it and I told him just how disappointed was.

"Tell you what. It'll eat lots of yummy things and we can make out all day!"

"Tell your nasty fantasies to someone else."

"They're not nasty!"

"Shut up, just keep it to yourself." I began to drink again just out of frustration.

"How was therapy today?"

"It's not therapy, it's a support group or something."

"How was it?"

"Awful."

"You didn't make any friends? Did you even _try_?"

"I talked to this one girl."

"Is it the girl you'll be leaving me for?"

"No, she's already got a ribbon. Plus, she's a bit of a chatterbox, and she asks too many questions."

"I see… you won't replace me though, right?"

"Sure, whatever."

"And you won't make them fall in love with you?"

"Gee, I'll really try." I spat sarcastically.

"You're more charming than you realize."

"Only to you. Haven't we had this discussion already?"

"I just like listening to you talk."

"Well, I'd love to appease you but my parents are on watch. I said I was going to check out a few books at the library so I should probably get going."

"So soon? I miss your face when you're gone."

I stuck my fingers in my mouth and contorted my face up into a hideous mess. "There, now you don't have much to miss."

"I'm serious! I've never known a face that's beautiful like yours, that didn't come out of a test tube, I know it. It's like, even if my eyes are closed, you're right there, smiling your sneaky little smile. I think I'm insane half of the time. It can't be normal to be so infatuated with a person, to remember their hair and teeth and ears with perfect detail but it's those things that never leave me. " The boy peeked his grass-green eyes down to his lap and quirked a smile under a thin blush that was currently arising.

All of the blood in all of my veins found a way up to my face. "W-What the hell do you want?"

"Just to spend more time with you. I want to listen to you rant then go home and decipher for the rest day the deepness of the things you say."

"W-walk me home then… I don't care… I can't promise any magical epiphany though."

"I'd be honored." He hooked his arm in mine and I quickly pulled it out.

"Not like that, idiot! Some one will see!"

"But Lovi!"

"NO. We have to keep our eyes out. They know already, I'm sure of it. Lets just stay low, okay? You don't know what those politia will do. "

"They wouldn't take me away for escorting you home, that's silly."

"_You don't know what they'll do._ Maybe they'll shave your head, take your name, and throw you in a curvus camp so you can work until your flesh rots off your bones. Those people don't have laws to follow, don't ever think that they won't do something just because it's unethical"

"Hey, hey, relax. Alright, fine. I won't lay a finger on you, I promise, don't worry. But I'm going to stop by tonight."

"What for? That's just begging for trouble."

Antonio loud out a loud grumble of frustration. "I have to see you _sometime_. There's only so much caution that I can take." He collected the last of his things and we began to walk.

"What if my neighbor reports of a strange boy climbing through my window? What's worse, what if that stupid police man stops by and realizes that you don't have a chip?"

"You worry so much!"

"There's a lot to worry about!"

"Okay, in dooms day scenario I'll just… borrow a fake chip. I'll tape it under my sleeve, no one will ever know."

"Do you think there's just boxes of free chips laying around?"

He gave me a confused face. "Of course… you don't know?"

"Know what?"

"Have you ever _seen_ a chip?"

"No…"

"There these small little blue pieces of hardware. The door across the hall from yours, the dark one, I got a peek inside and there were heaps of 'em."

"Wait! The room with the computer screens in it?" Father's office?

"Yeah. The door was a bit open and I saw them just sitting there. Dozens. No one would notice if I borrowed just one. It would be like having a cool alter-ego, don't you think? Antonio Fernandez Carriedo, known to the city as Sammy Jamerson!"

"That's my _dad's_ office. I have no idea why those are there or what they're used for, I don't even know what his fuck'n job is! You can't. Too dangerous."

He chuckled. "And everything else we've done is any more legal?"

"It's not a matter of legality! The things I've seen in that room… I don't even know what they are. It's not normal, it's something dark, something that I've chosen ignorance over curiosity for."

"What did you see?"

"I don't even know…" I was afraid to tell him because I just _knew_ he'd poke his nose into it; he doesn't know when to stop. All of the entries, talking about subjects and treatments… that self-righteous bastard wouldn't be able to help himself. I had decided to just not think about it rather than waste the energy on something that would bring me only pain. Antonio didn't know the difference, everything was a noble cause to him. I couldn't tell him.

"Was it about you?" _This is because of you_. I remembered my father's words, the ones that tore at my curiosity the most. The ones that temped me.

"I'm not talking about it, Antonio."

"Was it that bad?"

I stopped walking and stood before him sternly, forcing his to watch me exclusively. "Listen to me, Toni." He nodded. "Do not go into that room, do not look at it, do not _think_ about it. It's bad, that's all you need to know. Resist it just until we can leave. I swear, if you so much as touch the door, I will throw myself out a window. Got it?"

"Okay, got it." He whimpered.

"Okay." I turned front-face and continued on walking.

"You called my Toni…" Came a small chuckle from behind.

"What?"

"You called me Toni." He repeated.

"So? Fuck, is that the only thing you got from that?"

"No, sorry! I heard it all just…I dunno. It feels special to have a nickname."

"Come on, it's not like no one's ever called you Toni before."

"True but it's different because it's you."

"It's impressive how stupidly romantic you are."

"You'll call me Toni again, won't you? I'd like it if you did. But, only when you really mean it."

"We'll see. Don't get your hopes up."

"My hopes are officially raised to the level _up_."

"You're an idiot."

And he responded by saying that it wasn't his fault that his childhood wasn't as obsessively dedicated to studying as mine was and I told him that there were plenty of opportunities to study if he wanted to. The rest was just mindless ramble between the two of us until we reached my house. Of course, we went around the back. "See you tonight then." He confirmed.

"I wish you wouldn't."

"You can't stop me."

"I can shoot you." His carefree smile flattened instantly.

"You don't have a gun, do you?"

"No."

"Does you father?"

"Please, Antonio, don't you think you'd be dead already if he did?"

His smile slowly returned. "_See you tonight_."

"Fine, whatever. Tonight. Just don't get caught."

"I won't."

"I know. As much as I hate to admit it, you're just too sneaky."

"Like a monkey."

"Yes, like a monkey. A very ugly and stupid monkey."

"Hey!" I couldn't help a laugh from escaping. He was charming in a way that was so hard to fight. "See you tonight." He said one last time. "Keep your window unlocked."

"See you tonight." I pecked his lips before he left, letting him think it was an especially romantic way of saying goodbye when in reality, I was searching his lips for just a little remnant of boysenberry jam.


	5. The Color of Imposition

The Daisy Genocide

_The Color of Imposition_

When I entered the house, nobody was waiting. Well, not nobody. The walls were still there, they had been there my whole life. They knew my schedule with perfect accuracy, they sensed me as I moved through rooms, they were the walls that encased my perfect little life with my perfectly little family. It was a standard Family-of-Three house like all the other Family-of-Three households, built with all the necessities decided by a council. White walls, clean walls, walls that were so clean that you were positive they were watching you.

Today was the fourth day of the week, Thursday, which meant mother would be with her community group, fundraising money for something completely useless. Father would be at work like he always was. The silence of the house tempted me to do something that I had forbidden myself to do, explore the study. But I couldn't. No way. I promised myself. I had enough to worry about. I worried about sneaking around with Antonio, learning how to eat, preparing myself for escape, stealing, lying, cursing, and all other sorts of crimes. I didn't need to worry about that room too. I just needed to forget about it for a few weeks, just long enough to escape it.

Without fail, I remembered Marxi. He wouldn't be afraid, he'd have looked at all those things with his eyes wide, hungering for knowledge that he felt so entitled to. That's why Marxi was an idiot. He could never just mind his own business. He never spared himself any pain because he wanted to feel everything humanly possible. That's where we were different. I'm afraid. Things you don't know _can_ hurt you. That room, that pitch black room with florescent computer screens is a lion crouching in tall grass. Go towards it out of curiosity and it lunges, back away slowly and forget you ever saw it and you may just go on your merry way.

I went to my room in search of distraction and found that Feliciano's old records had been resurrected and laid on my bed. My parents are not very subtle with their hints. Still, I flipped through them. Most of the papers were his scribbly notes and every once in a while, a picture would be doodled on the corner of the page, Toward the end of his life, years eleven and twelve, there were an overwhelming appearance of hearts in the doodles. He must have loved somebody, only, he never wrote the name. I had my hunches. Once, when I was much younger, a man approached me. He was a tall man in his teenage years or possibly even entering adulthood. A blond man, blue eyes, I think. He grabbed me on the playground once and called me my brother's name and he looked at me with these grieving eyes. I told him that my brother was dead and he apologized then let me go and walked off.

I see him sometimes still. He looks at me with those same eyes every time. I tried to talk to him once and ask him how he knew my brother but he didn't want to talk about it. He just asked how my family was, how my studies were going, and disappeared like a ghost.

I thought about Antonio. What if I died, right in the middle of him loving me, and in a year, he met the next Lovino? Would he cry? Would he remember me? Would he make the face that the blonde man used to make? The notion was unmentionably painful. I boxed up Feliciano's files and made a decision. Before I left, I would make sure I gave them back to the blonde man.

I turned on the soundisome next in attempt to forget the sorrows of my brother's life. Sometimes, I grieve for him and forget how hateful I am of the boy. The news caster reported: "Another perfect day. Walk your pets, take a swim, read a good book, and enjoy the weather. In other news, there has been an occurrence on the reservation. An elderly natural woman was discovered with goods commonly found in a city household. When questioned, she insisted that the goods were not stolen, but were _given_ to her. She refused to disclose the name of her supplier, politia are resolving the issue." Those last words made me shiver. I turned off the soundisome.

I remembered the book hidden under my bed, The Innocent Criminal, in which a man is falsely convicted of a crime and sentenced to death by the people he once knew. Every where I looked was death. You'd think, for a society so infatuated with preserving life, it would be a much more rare occurrence but I couldn't avoid it. Marxi, my father's office, the news reports, even the dry, cold, white walls reeked of death. I suddenly felt claustrophobic. I looked around for something to bring me away from the impending sickness but all I could find was my own imagination. I closed my eyes and tried to do whatever Antonio did to have happy memories.

I thought back. Something happy. I thought about swimming with my playmates but even those memories ended in my bitterness after _again_ being elected to play a female role. I thought of cuddling with our old dog, Buck, but then I remembered the feeling of loneliness and helplessness in those nights. My mother coddling me warmly because she wanted me to replace her dead child, My father reading to me about molecular engineering because he wanted a son who would proudly take his name. Every memory I had was inflicted with a twinge of loneliness, every memory except those of Antonio in which I was the focus of his unselfish attention. He never wanted anything from me, he never wanted to reincarnate my brother or persuade me into perfection. He was simply there to smile and listen.

For the first time, when I thought about him, it enacted all of my senses into a memory that was as clear as if I were reliving it. His wide toothy grin and sparkling green eyes, his warm, smooth skin and soft locks of hair, the scent of dry leaves and river moss, his rich laughter, the bitter boysenberry jam on his lips. I loved it, I loved _him_. I thought about the boy until I heard the resounding click of the front door and went down to make greetings.

"Hello, sweetie, how was the library?" My mother asked, setting down her purse and a stack of flyers that advertised yet another fundraiser.

"Fine."

"That's good to hear. How long have you been home?"

"An hour maybe?"

"Good, good." She searched through her purse. "Now listen, Honey, there's something I want to ask you about."

"Alright."

She pulled out a pamphlet entitled: Youth, Hormones, and Courting. "I want to talk about this. Have you given any thought to maybe finding a dimidium? Hm?"

"I've thought about it." I planned to say as little as possible, I had expected the arrival of this very conversation.

"Me too, I've always wondered when would be a good time to find you a nice girl, to teach you about responsibility and compassion. Your father and I agreed that you're at the age where, if you wanted, you could start courting. We even got you some applications if you prefer to have a service introduce you to someone."

"Uh-huh."

"You see, you're at an age where you're ready for a change like this in your life. It's a very exciting time. You get to meet new people, learn things about yourself, and hopefully find a mate. Someday you may even have a child of your own. You don't know how happy I am for you!" She embraced me in a small hug. Did she even remember yesterday? The day I burned my hand_ twice_, the day I fought and cursed at her? Was she really so easy to reset?

"I'd like to apply for a pairing."

"Already!?"

I nodded.

She squealed softly. "So grown up! I can't believe how old you are already!" She hugged me again. "We'll go meet with the application center soon, okay my little anxious pup? Just let me fix my make up and have a drink."

"Alright."

Truth be told, we did go to the application center where a very, _very_ friendly woman took my pictured, filled out my application with me, and talked me through the basics of how the system worked. My file would wait around until a good match had been found and then it would be offered to me and I could either accept or deny the invitation to meet said match. The files were reviewed everyday at Three o'clock (Two hours from now) and any matches that could be made would be made. She also warned me that some people's files are in the system longer than others because a good match was not available at the time.

Mother told me just how excited she was on the whole walk home. She told me about how she had applied for pairing when she was younger as well and she described her first meeting with my father. They were both very regular people, a simple wife and a simple husband and naturally marriage followed. I couldn't be happier to run up to my room and rid myself of the blabbering woman.

Then the strangest thing happened. I was studying in a book about nerve cells for a long while, just doing my normal activities, and suddenly my mother called me downstairs with a squirrelly shrill to her voice. I rushed down just to be reunited with the overly friendly woman from the application center. "Hello, Lovino." She said with a smile and held out a file. Was she returning my file? Had they rejected it because I was really boring or too unlikable or did they already know about my plans? "We had a match. It really is amazing. Sometimes we have applicants who just move right through the system, you're one of the lucky ones!" No way… I could hardly believe my luck!

I took the file with confusion and read it through. Her name was Harzetta Franco Beilschmidt and she was essentially perfect. I had my doubts, I mean, people like me, _difficult people_, have such a hard time with assignment. It can take anywhere from years to never to find a suitable companion but God had sent me a miracle. Ms. Harzetta was undeniably a very beautiful young girl. When they offered me the assignment, they attached a profile of the girl, supplying a list of her hobbies, her studies, her morals, her genetics, and a picture. What first stood out was her watery blue eyes, bright and youthful like Marxi's were; then I noticed her long, thin, flaxen hair that framed her small face. She was from a strict, well-raised family, a perfect match for a troubled boy like me. That's why they paired us, to even two extremes.

The more I read her profile, the more I felt like I knew her and the sadder I has that I would lie to her. But I had prepared myself for this. I would do my best to distance myself from her. I would be kind to her like a young man should be but I would restrain myself from doing anything to prompt the relationship. I didn't want to hurt her, she was just a convenience, a cover that I needed to have. I didn't want her to love me and I would do my best to keep anything like that from happening.

My mother and I called, hoping that I could meet them on Tuesday but Beilschmidt, not unlike my own mother, was far to excited to wait any longer than an hour and she insisted I stopped by that day. I was pretty pleased with that response because I had already groomed myself for therapy earlier that day and I didn't want to have to do it again. Still, I combed back my hair for the slick look of it even though the way-wards curl would bob out even more prominently. They were very welcoming people, her parents. Even the girl herself was as polite and merciful as a lamb. They sat with me and Harzetta and questioned me regarding my studies, hobbies, morals, all of which I lied about. They seemed to approve of my presence and took the meeting to the next proper step, inviting other members of the family to meet and converse with me.

I found myself thoroughly shocked when her siblings appeared to greet me, not because of the sheer quantity (seven, including Harzetta), but because the oldest boy was harshly familiar. Tall, built, blond, blue-eyed…sad blue eyes. He was the man from my childhood.

The moment he saw me and I saw him, a frenzy of emotion came over him. Mostly anger, some sadness, some regret, some annoyance. He turned away and left into another room. No one seemed to mind the lack of his presence except for me so I properly introduced myself to each of the children and excused myself to follow him at the first opportunity. He looked up at me from his distraught place in a lonely chair when I quietly entered the room. The air was thick, uncomfortable, not at all welcoming to me. "I don't want to see you." He said, gutting right down to the truth. His face looked to have been completely washed of energy, his eyes sulking in a darkness that wasn't there before.

"I know… I don't blame you. You were the man who loved my brother, weren't you?" I asked softly, feeling like my words, no matter how kind, protruded the atmosphere too harshly. Like shining a single beam of light into a world of thick fog.

His heavy head fell back into his hands with a mournful whimper. "Correction. I _love_ him. I still do."

"I wish I could have known him…I mean, from what I hear, he was a really amazing person."

"You can't understand…" There was a long silence that I didn't dare interrupt. "He was so happy, that kid…_god_…just so happy. He never deserved what happened to him…Did you know they never even gave him a funeral? _Those bastards._ They didn't love him like I did… they should have at least dressed him up, given him some nice flowers, sung him a prayer. Then they do _this_ to me… they make another, just to mock him, as if he was just a combination of proteins."

"I've tried my hardest to bring him back, I have, I promise."

"It's not about you. It was never about you, _Pomaig_. You're the result of this sick misconception your parents have, you're just a sadistic dream, a fault of humanity, and a way to dehumanize Feliciano."

His words didn't hurt me. I had said all that and worse to myself many times before so it hurt me in the same way as saying my hair was brown hurt me. In fact, I was just as angry as he was about these facts. I knew it all, there was nothing he could throw at me. "Look, I just have some things I want to give you."

"I don't want them." He grumbled sourly.

"I'm giving them to you whether you want them or not, I'm not doing it for you, I'm doing it for Feliciano."

"You don't know the first thing about what he would want."

"_Shut up_." I hissed in frustration. "I know I'm not Feliciano, _I know that_. Better than anyone else, I think. But I know Feliciano well enough, I've been in his shoes, I've studied his life through a microscope enough to know that he would want me to give these to you so I'm going to."

"What then." He demanded.

"His files. Everything he left behind. His pictures, essays, diary writings, all of it. I'll give it all to you."

"Don't be ridiculous. Your parents wouldn't let them out the door, I know, I tried."

"Here's the thing." I took a deep breath and let my tongue play over the words for a minute before I said them. "I'm leaving here… for good. I'll hide them someplace for you to find before I go."

"You're_ leaving_?"

"Yes…"

"When?"

"The end of the month hopefully."

"Then what is it you're doing here!? What have you planned for Harzetta!? Or did you come to mock me! To force these memories upon me!" He raged in the most terrifying of ways and I was fearful for my brother, even though it was useless now.

"No! That's not it at all, I didn't even know the two of you are related, it was all by coincidence. I won't do anything to her, I swear! I just… I need a _cover_. I have a boy of my own and I need to divert their attention, I need to keep him off suspicion."

"So you've come to do to my sister what Feliciano did to me!? Haven't you had enough!? Exactly what kind of torture do you plan to put me through!?"

"I'm sorry! I never planned to love her or let her love me but still… I have to do it. I can't take a risk, I've too much to loose."

"I won't allow it."

"I wish there were another option but there isn't. Getting assigned to anybody at all was a miracle and I'd sacrifice your and your sister's momentary sadness for my boy's life any day."

"You think my sadness is momentary? You insult me like that? Think about your boy right now and if you truly love him, then imagine his life stripped from him in his prime. Imagine how alone you would feel, how helpless, how pitiful, how useless. Imagine now how that feeling would intensify when you saw him reborn and realized that you could never have him back because he was truly gone. Think about the hate. The hate for the people who threw out his existence like garbage and for the one who wore his skin just to dirty his name. Think about the illness that festers inside you, killing off every happiness that you once knew. Lastly, take a look at yourself and feel my disgust." He spat.

"Don't talk to me like that! Don't you know that I would give anything for my brother to still be alive!?" I yelled as heat prickled at my eyes. "I _hate_ this! I _hate_ having to live as him, I _hate_ that I'll never be the Lovino that I want to be and now I have _you_, a perfect stranger, who hates my guts and blames _**me**_ for my brother's death! That's my everyday! My grandfather, my parents, my teachers and librarians, they all hate me because I'm not what my label sells me to be! I NEVER WANTED HIM TO DIE! I NEVER EVEN WANTED TO BE ALIVE!" Finally I lost restraint of my tears and they gushed out, I quickly brought my palms up to cover them but the sobbing couldn't be silenced.

I heard I sigh as two big, warm hands grabbed my wrists and forced them away from my face. I was pushed into his body and held there, muttering, "It's not my fault, I didn't hurt him, I never meant to hurt him, it's not my fault, _I swear_."

"I know it's not." A gentle voice answered back. I didn't believe that it belonged to the boy who, just a moment ago, was red in the face with disgust for my entire existence.

"I-it's not my fault…not mine, I never hurt him, I didn't want him to die…"

"Hush. I said it's not, I'm sorry, alright? Stop crying…" He took a shuddering breath. "…You…You cry just like him… just like your brother… I can't stand strong against it, even now. Even when it's you." I felt him mess with my hair, combing it back forward and leaving it parted down the middle like my brother wore it. "The similarities are excruciating."

I broke away from his hold and whipped my face. "If I don't get back out there, they'll wonder where I am."

"Don't take Harzetta." He interrupted.

"I already told you, I don't have another option."

His thoughtful silence held me where I was. "I'm not married."

"What are you saying?"

"Take me instead. I'll play cover."

"But-"

"I owe it to Feliciano. I could never help him enough when he was alive but maybe I could do this for him… he'd want me to."

"No, you can't! Not after-"

"You can never break my heart as bad as your brother did, I can take it. I watched you as a child enough to know the difference."

"Are you…are you serious?"

He shrugged. "I guess I am, I don't know why I wouldn't be."

"Just… do you really think you could do it?"

He smiled a little bit and when I looked closer at this odd expression, I noticed that he wasn't smiling at me but at my hair that was now identical to my brother's. He was remembering or perhaps even pretending. "On one condition." His eyes slid down onto mine and a big hand held my jaw. His smiled remained poised on his face, still true and loving. I couldn't believe that he was aiming it at me. "Please, allow this." His face moved in and our lips connected. I didn't budge. My heart ached for him, for his disillusionment, his desperate hope. I thought about Antonio and I knew that I would want the next Lovino to do the same thing for him that I was doing for Ludwig. So I stayed still and relaxed my lips.

He kissed them softly as if he actually believed I was the love of his life. He was gentle with me, never once rough or demanding. I understood now how my innocent brother could fall for him. His kissing slowed and finally ended as he frowned against my lips, parted, and looked at me with those sad eyes. He lazily fixed my hair back to my usual part and straightened my collar. "This is how you were meant to be… you're not Feliciano…"

He turned away as stifled a sob. "Go now. I'll keep my deal."

I left as he instructed, returning to Harzetta and her parents and readying myself for my greatest performance. "Did you talk with Ludwig?" The young girl asked. I forced a blush by thinking about romantic advances between Antonio and I then sat down a little farther from her than before.

"I did." I mumbled in a shy way.

"He's been a whole different person since a friend of his died." His mother mentioned. "He doesn't want to talk to anyone; I'm surprised he even opened his mouth for you."

"Yes, well, he's a very interesting young man."

"Young? Why, he's twenty-seven in March."

I brought the blush back. "He certainly doesn't look it."

Finally, I could see the suspicion creeping into his parents' eyes. "How has Harzetta been to you? Is she homely? Did she offer you a refreshment?"

"Yes, mother, I didn't forget." She said.

"Don't you think she'd make a good wife?" The father asked.

"Yes. Speaking of wives, where's Ludwig's?"

"He's never been married. You've taken an interest in him, I see?" The mother mentioned.

I again blushed. Acting is hard work. "Just a bit, I suppose. I have to admit, It's odd how we connect. I like to listen to him talk. I've hardly known him and he's already dear to me like my friends are."

"I see. Maybe you two will be close friends."

"I hope so." I glanced back at the room where he still was, weeping his heart out. I pained for him.

We talked some more about Harzetta and I paid attention but did little things to seem uninterested like glance back at the room and ask them to repeat themselves. Then I'd apologize for being so rude and say that my mind must have been somewhere else and I'd mention that I was having a hard time focusing today. By the end of the hour, I had sold them on their suspicions. Surprisingly, Harzetta acted much more comfortably around me after she had figured it out.

Mr. and Mrs. Beilschmidt excused Harzetta by telling her to water her plants before the sun shone too harshly on them. She agreed and left then the two of them moved over to sit closer to me. They smiled very kindly. "Lovino, dear, we want to talk about our oldest son, Ludwig. We walk to talk about what kind of relationship you have with him."

Again, blushing. "I don't know. I just feel…_odd_ around him."

"Tell us about that." In our society, nobody hid homosexuality and nobody was afraid of it for two reasons. One, religion and natural birth had been banished from our science-focused lives and two, nobody lied. Homosexuality was not a fashion statement or a thing for rebellious teenagers to be so if you said you were homosexual, then you just were and nobody could do anything to change that. Plus, homosexual people do science just as when as heterosexual people. Of all the many discriminations we cling to, gayness is not one of them.

"Well, I can't stop myself from smiling even though nothing funny has been said and my stomach feels like illness. I may be contracting a fever, I think I should go home."

"No, stay, please." Mrs. Beilschmidt said with a small excitement and gently touched my arm. "Lovino, those feeling are not illness."

"Are you sure? My face feels hot and… and sometimes I find it hand to talk."

Mr. Beilschmidt chuckled and papped my shoulder. "I felt the same way when I met Laura here."

"Ludwig isn't married." The Mrs. Began again, "And, you know, by this time he really ought to be. He needs some stability in his life, a counterpart to keep him in check. Someone…_exciting_ to get him out of his rut."

"What are you saying?" I asked shyly.

"We're saying that you may be just that person." The father papped my shoulder again. "If you're feeling that way about him, we think you may be just the person we've been looking for."

"Me? Marry Ludwig?" Blushing was hard work but I forced my face to redden even more. I was feeling a little light-headed.

They both smiled. "Court first but maybe someday, you could marry him and add another child to our family."

"I …I need to talk to him again… if you don't mind."

They nodded and watched as I nervously walked back into the room and shut the door behind me with a small clicking sound before finally letting out a sigh of relief. "I did it."

Ludwig was in the corner again, still heaped into his chair but now he was staring at the wall remembering sadness. "Ludwig?" I asked. He didn't even flinch. "_Ludwig_?" I inched closer. "Luddy?"

"_Don't call me that."_ He growled.

"Okay." I backed off. "I just wanted to say that I did it… they bought it. They want us to get married and have babies." I laughed nervously and quietly.

"Okay."

"Um… I wanted to know..."

"What." He demanded.

"I think we should exchange ribbons."

He didn't answer.

"Ludwig?"

"I…I can't give it to you. It's not for you."

"But how-"

"I'll find one. Don't worry. Just… can you give me some time?"

"Yeah, 'course." I left as he asked and returned to the hopeful parents.

"How'd it go?" They asked, almost in unison.

"_Great_. He wants to exchange ribbons."

"I'll go get it for you!" Mrs. Beilschmidt stood but I touched her arm, calling her to stay.

"He wants to give it to me in person but he feels rather ill at the moment. We'll wait a little longer to exchange them."

They agreed with my explanation and Mrs. Beilschmidt continued to insist on getting me a glass of water but I refused and excused myself, saying that I had to inform my parents of my decision and collect my ribbon. They were very nice people, they even wanted to walk me home but I refused that too. I didn't want to hurt them any more than I had to.

Father was home when I returned. He was reading the paper in the dining room, he didn't even look up at me. My mother on the other hand was ecstatic. It had been a very good day for her. She quickly dried her soapy hands off (she had been scrubbing the counters) and ran over to embrace me in a hug. She demanded to know how it went and how I liked Harzetta.

"She's a nice girl but I learned something about myself while I was at her house."

"And that is?"

"That I am homosexual. I felt relations for a boy there, the oldest son."

"Oh, the big muscular one? Honey," She looked over to her husband who peeked out from behind the paper. "Honey, isn't he the boy who…oh…what does he do…"

"Fisherman." My father interjected.

"Oh! That's right! He's the fisherman! Yes, that's a fine trade! He'd make a good husband for you."

"He's going to exchange ribbons with me when he's feeling less ill."

My father set down his paper and walked over to me. He patted my back just once. "I know the boy, he's a good one, a strong seed. He'll be able to keep your mind out of the clouds and your focus back where it ought to be. Yes, he'll be a good match for you." He removed his hand from me and his stale face remained stale. "You always did seem to be more of a boy-interested child, Feli. I think they're just better ones for keeping down wild spirits like yours." He turned and left up the stairs. I had a feeling he would be calling me Feli from now on.

At my mother's request, I sat with her and made up some mumbo-jumbo story about our romance. How he had been sweet and kind to me even when it was the complete opposite. I left out the part where he told be how much he hated me and how I disgusted him and our agreement and our mutual weeping, which was pretty much the whole thing.

I studied in my room peacefully until, for the third time today, I saw that stupid, stupid, smiling face. I heaved my tired limbs up so that I could open my window and plop onto my bed. "What's wrong?" The childish voice asked as it's owner pulled his last leg through the opening.

"Tired. It's been a long day."

"Yeah? Tell me about it." He sat beside me.

"First of all, this is the longest I've ever gone in my entire life without sleep. Then there's the whole "I'm a memory clone" bomb that I had to deal with and after that I went to a stupid troubled youth therapy where I was harassed by an old neighbor. That's not the end though. I ran to have lunch with some idiot all the way over at the bitch trees and experienced taste for the first time. And if all that's not enough, I applied to be paired, they found a match and now I'm officially courting this huge freaky muscle guy. _That's _why I'm tired." I am quite the trooper.

"They matched you with a _man_? Who is it?"

"They matched me with a girl who's brother is Feliciano's very bitter boyfriend."

"How does _that_ work?"

"I don't know, Antonio, It's very complicated." I complained and tiredly threw a pillow over my head. I expected the boy to throw a fit and demand that I tell him all about this muscle man but instead, I was rewarded with a soothing pressure applied to my back. It dug into my muscles and moved up and down, sometimes stopping to kneed a certain area. This must be a massage. The normal Lovino would hiss and scratch and refuse this treatment but the tired Lovino embraced it fully. I needed it so bad.

"Go to sleep." He said softly. This side of Antonio was different from any other side I'd seen before. He was normally such an excitable boy. He was non-stop energy, an incompetence machine and being with him alone would drain all my power but right now, he was barely there.

"Don't you want to hear about-"

"Tell me tomorrow. I just wanted to check on you."

"If I'm going to go to sleep, then you have to leave."

"I will."

"No, you have to leave_ before_ I fall asleep so I know that you're gone. If not, you'll climb right into bed with me, I know you will, and my mother will see and we'll be killed."

"I'll go, I promise."

"I don't trust you. I'll wake up and you'll be there and you'll give me some stupid excuse about how you couldn't resist and you just got so tired." I did the stupidest, dopiest voice I could manage for my impersonation of him.

He laughed. _Oh god_, that laugh. It could have put me to sleep if I hadn't been so focused on my consciousness. "You do a pretty good me."

"Hey, Toni?" I hummed softly, using the nickname on purpose.

"Yeah?"

"If I died…"

"What is this about?" He asked, his voice a little deeper.

"Just a question."

"Okay… if you…died…"

"And they made another Lovino-"

"That's impossible. There's only one-"

"Just listen, will you!? Jesus!"

"Okay, I'm listening."

"Okay. So if they cloned me and your met the little clone me… what would you do?"

Silence followed my question. "I guess I'd be tempted to kidnap it, given that I haven't committed suicide yet."

"Okay, note for the future, if that _is_ the situation… please don't kidnap the poor thing."

He chuckled slightly. "Well…I don't know. I guess I'll just make sure that never happens."

I rolled over so that my head rested in his lap and I could look up at him. "If it were you, I'd probably put the thing out of its misery. Imagine, having everybody compare it to an idiot like _you_." We both laughed a little that time. "But seriously… when I die…maybe during the escape or years from now, I want you to take me very, very, very, far away from any humans and burry me deep down where no one will ever find me. I want this life to be my last."

He smiled so kindly and pushed my hair from my face. It was _my_ hair that he was touching lovingly; he wasn't pretending that it was my brother's. "So beautiful, my boy." He cooed and bent down to kiss the lips that he wasn't pretending were anyone else's. I loved him so dearly, my Antonio. I kissed him back with all the feeling I could give. "Of course, my love, of course." His small voice breathed against my lips. "Will you do the same for me?"

I smiled a true smile, I smile that I loved him with. "Of course, my love…_of course_."

He pressed the smallest flutter-bye kiss on my forehead and whispered for the last time that he loved me before laying my head down on my pillow and leaving like I had asked him too. Then I could fall asleep warmly, thinking to myself how terribly I loved that stupid boy.


	6. Doors That Open Too Wide

The Daisy Genocide

_Doors That Open Too Wide_

The dream again. I met the man on the pogo stick, I reenacted the same role and in the end I was left wondering what the most important things in life were.

When my consciousness drifted back to me, I barely realized my right fist was grasped firmly around something. I opened my hand to reveal a palm-sized patch of soft, brown fur that was tied into a bundle with a piece of leather and now partially dampened with my sweat. Naturally, I wondered why it was there at all.

I propped myself up onto an elbow and let loose the leather binding. Nested inside the square of hide was a small golden pin in the form of a bird, its wingspan no greater than an inch wide. The little creature's wings and tails were painted in vibrant sapphire, its eyeball a minuscule diamond-like stone. I smiled at it with the silly motion that it might feel my affection. I rose from my bed, stretched my unused muscles and looked to the note on the edge of my desk.

_Lovino, Dearest, I couldn't find a ribbon but I hope you'll accept this in the place of one. Also, don't forget to finish up those bottles! I'll make sure to eat some more jam before I come over~ Leave the window unlocked tonight._

That stupid bastard. I chuckled to myself and hid the note in a book, the fur in my pillowcase and the pin in my pant pocket. I touched it there to make sure it hadn't evaporated. I wasn't sure why I liked it so much, maybe its smallness reminded me of the my significance. Maybe I liked it because of its contrast to the white walls that were suffocating me. Maybe I just liked the promise that it symbolized. I liked having some physical proof that Antonio was not a figure of my imagination. I let my thumb and forefinger blindly fumble with the trinket for the simple comfort of its presence.

The objective of the day was to see Ludwig again. I needed to talk to him, I felt this need to make his tortuous existence _okay_ even though the only one capable of such a task was fifteen-years dead. What's worse, I represented everything he hated in life. It was naïve to think that I could offer him any comfort or that he'd even want the comfort I could give but I decided to take a page out of Antonio's book and believe in the unreasonable outcome. Maybe I could find something to give him, something like my pin.

Mother was down stairs, doing the same thing she was always doing. "Good morning, Dear. How'd you sleep? Well, I suspect? You had a very busy day, I bet you fell right to sleep."

I wondered if I said nothing, if she would even notice. Out of obligation, I mumbled a yes.

"That's good, I'm glad you're sleeping habits are healthy. Oh, the news was on just earlier, did you know that?"

The news comes on at the same time every morning. She always asks me the same question, the walls always hear, they know the routine. They watch us reenact our parts with stunning accuracy, their pale eyes stare at me as I move, never once removing their painfully harsh glare. They know about Antonio, about Feliciano, they have all my secrets yet they are dead with silence. I hate the walls. I want for them to stop watching me, stop being so unchanging, stop being so silent.

"-something to put in a textbook."

"What is?" I had forgotten she was even talking.

"Another breakthrough. They say it'll change the way we look at myocardial ischemiac conditions for the next five years."

"Is that so?"

She nodded. "Maybe you could stop by the facility later. They might give you a tour."

"Mother?"

"Yes, Dear?"

"What's most important in life?"

"Pardon?"

"Complete the statement, the most important things are…"

"Simple." She decided. "A clean house, a warm meal, a smiling family. The most important things are right in front of you, they're the basics. People always run around, trying to find their happiness in books and games and friends but they really just ought to stay home and know what's really important."

"Are you happy?"

Her red lips pursed up into a smile. "_Very_ happy."

"Mother?"

"What is it, Lovino?"

"What would you do if I were dead?"

The smile disappeared. "What do you mean by that?"

"If I died, what would you do?"

"But you're not dead."

"I know. Suppose I was though. Suppose my heart collapsed and I died right here, right now."

"Well, I would take you down to the medic center to get your heart started again, of course."

"But what if I were just dead? If I were all gone, not coming back."

The woman looked at me for a long time. I wondered what mix of confusion, sadness, and curiosity there was in her face. She stood up and took her empty glass to the sink before washing it. "But you're not dead. That's all."

I sat down at the table. "Mother?"

"Yes?" She answered this time with slight frustration.

"Mother, do you remember the boy Marxi?"

"Marxi? The rebel boy?"

"That's him."

"What about him?"

"Do you think that he knew he was going to die? When he got up in front of the Shmit and Hildener Research Facility, don't you think he knew that something really bad was going to happen? Why did he do it anyways? Was it just dumb courage or-"

"No more, Lovino. When the politia resolve an issue, it's meant to remain resolved. People will look down on you for dwelling so much on that silly rebel. People will call you an affiliation."

"Okay. I won't say any more about him."

"Good. You need to focus on what's important."

"Mother?"

"What?"

"Back when everybody was naturals, they were very happy, right? They had little shops to own and vacations to attend-"

"And they also had _war_. Lovino, dear, all of these questions… they're filling your mind with useless thoughts. These are questions that should not be asked or answered. We're happy, this society is happy, there's no need to worry about things like that. Do you understand?"

I nodded. "But Mother, what if-"

"You know what?" She interrupted. "Where's Ludwig? You two should spend some more time together." She offered in attempt to pass me off to someone who would be able to, as they say, "keep my head out of the clouds".

"Well it's Friday so the fishermen won't be out today. I guess I could ask him to take me around the docks."

"That sounds wonderful. Why don't you call him up?"

So I did, making sure to take the call in my room for added privacy. "Ya?" A raspy, gritty voice answered. It was probably the sick brother, the pail one who wouldn't stop coughing the whole while I was there. I knew about him mostly because there were so few people in the city who were born ill and never fixed. I knew the rumors of the vampiric shut-in, the one with blood shot eyes who watched children from his window. I had heard that he was fond of the small ones and that if you made eye contact with him, you were cursed.

"Gilbert?" I asked, hoping that I had remembered the name correctly.

Static silence whispered between us as if the boy didn't know how to respond to having his name called.

"Yeah, who is this?"

"Lovino."

"Lovino? Lovino _who_?" Just then, I caught someone in the background whisper something about little. "Oh, oh yeah! The boy with the scientist daddy! What can I do for ya', Smalls?" Apparently the policemen weren't the only ones who used such informal language. I ignored it though.

"I wanted to talk with Ludwig."

"That old fart? Yeah, I'll get 'im for you." I heard him yelling for his brother or… doing the best he could. His sickly lungs, the same ones that put the grovel in his voice, rasped out Ludwig's name and finally succumbed to hacking over the final G. The phone was transferred.

"Ya?" A stronger, healthier voice answered.

"It's Lovino."

"Ya?" He repeated after a weary sigh. He suddenly sounded as sickly as his brother.

"Can you take me somewhere?"

"Where?"

"Anywhere. I don't want to be here."

He thought for a while. "I don't know…"

"Talk, maybe? We could just talk some."

"Uh…ya, okay. You can stop by, I guess."

"Okay, thanks."

"Sure." And with that, he hung up. I put on my nicely pleated coat. It wasn't too uncomfortable in the city because of the rainless-roof which regulated the imprint of nature but the docks were out at the water-side were cold wind skitted across white, foamy waters. My mother reminded me to keep mind of my manners and not to ask too many silly questions.

The Beilschmidt's had a nice home. It was large but fit their family well. Harzetta and her three sisters went to pool with the littlest son, Arno. Mother Beilschmidt and Father Beilschmidt went to work, leaving me, the sick boy, and the one who hated my guts. The odds were not in my favor.

The sick boy, Gilbert, sat comfortably in the corner chair listening to the soundisome. He watched me quietly. He was neither impressed nor appalled by my existence, he simply watched me with a tragic form of curiosity. I wondered if he was always like that, too ill to do anything but watch life as it played along without him.

Ludwig appeared out of one of the many rooms. When I saw him this time, his sad eyes only lived for a few moments before turning stern. I thought back to just yesterday, how he had looked at me with so much love because even _he_ couldn't stand the me that I was. Even _he_ only saw my brother, only saw me as a shell. Because of this, I frowned back at him. "Why did you come here?" He finally asked.

"I don't know." I admitted.

The soundisome was shut off. The boy stood up, making me catch my breath for fear that his pigmentless legs would break under him. He was thin and tall and lanky but not in the ways that Antonio was, in the ways that a skeleton was. He was drowned of all color besides his piercing eyes that should have been brown but had now deluded into a sinful red-ish color. "Brother," He called while walking toward us and latching a playful arm around the over-grown one's shoulders. "You are so cross with the lad! That's not the way we greet guests!"

A bony little hand was offered to me and I took it carefully. "You won't break him." Ludwig mentioned. "He's a lot more durable than he looks." I shook a tiny bit harder to prove that I wasn't afraid.

"Gilbert. I'm the brother." He introduced.

"Lovino. I'm the um…well, you know."

"Do I?"

"I'm courting Ludwig…"

"Are you now!?" The blonde man was not at all happy with his ridiculous younger sibling who was now poking him tauntingly. It was terrifying to see them interact like that. I was thinking that, at any moment, Ludwig could lose his cool and break the smaller's arm just by poking him back with his terrifying brute strength. Still, I sensed a gentleness about Ludwig that was hidden under those packs of muscle, a gentleness that my brother must have seen.

"Go away, Gilbert, this isn't any of your concern."

"I think it is! My cute big brother is exchanging ribbons and it's not my business?"

"You and your loud mouth are not welcome here." He snapped at the sickling who understood the harshness of his tone and groaned before retreating to another room. I stood against the German in silence, unsure of what he wanted to hear. Finally, I was able to piece together something.

"Did you know… there are approximately one hundred trillion cells in the human body? I mean, that's a whole lot of cells, I don't know if I can understand a number that big. The crazy thing is, they only needed one from Feliciano to create me. Feliciano is gone, I know that. I know that I'm not him and I'll never be him but there's just one cell in my whole body that's still his and it still feels a hundred trillionth of the way my brother felt about you. If it's worth anything, I can vouch for that one cell. I can tell how deeply it still loves you."

"Is this a way for you to screw with my emotions again?" He growled.

I ignored him. "My brother may be gone but that one cell, it knows that there was no lack of love when he was alive. It knows how short and tragic your stories became but it still has a hundred trillion cells that loved you to account for. Even now, even though I can't see him, _he's still there_. I still have a little piece of the boy I never got to meet."

"What would you know!? Is that why you came here!? To do this all again!?"

"I came here because I love a boy too! I love him with a hundred trillion minus one of my cells and it _**kills me**_ to know that, _so easily_, I could do the same thing to him that Feliciano did to you! _It kills me_ to think that my boy could be so lost, so broken! That's why I'm here! To prove to myself that there's life after death."

"And what life is that!? I sure as hell haven't been able to find it! You think you can prance in here like some fuck'n genie and screw over my life on a selfish whim!? It's all fun and games, huh? You need my happiness to make you comfortable with your own impending death. Well I'm not in the business of granting wishes for selfish children! The truth is, there is no comfort in death! There's none of this happy kumbaya or inner piece shit that comes after you lose your soul! Sorry to burst your bubble! You'll die an awful, sudden death and your boy will be left just as lost and broken as I am! Neither of you will be able to do anything about it. _There's your truth_."

I glared at him dead-on, fury burning my retinas. "_I'm ashamed_." I said slowly and harshly, grinding every syllable in and making it hurt. "I'm ashamed on account on Feliciano, _he would have expected better of you_."

Rage. His hand raised and in one brutal movement, it struck the soft skin of my cheek with a slap and almost sent me to the ground. I straightened myself up as soon as I regained my thoughts. _Neck deep_, I told myself. _Take it all at once and don't fear for the punishment._ "_You do not speak for Feliciano, you never even knew him, you filthy imposter_!" The hard German voice barked.

"_Hit me again_." I said tauntingly. "_I dare you_. If you choose to numb your pain with more pain then bring it forward. Make yourself drunk with false power, bring more _shame_ upon the poor soul of Feliciano!" Needless to say, it came again, harder. I had to bite my tongue to keep from whining when I caught myself on my knee. The joint took all of my weight against the old tile floor.

"You know nothing of pain! You know nothing but selfishness and cruel humor! Don't be foolish and think that I'll guilt myself for teaching you a lesson and you well deserve!"

It's even more grueling to pick yourself up for a second time but I did it. I imagined Ludwig as Antonio, I imagined him feeling this level of pain, unable to break free from his bitterness. So I picked myself up again and bit my lip. "Are you just going to keep going until you kill me? Will that make you feel better? Will you feel better when you see yourself turned into an unrecognizable monster? _Then do it again_. But make this one a good one, I want Feliciano to watch."

And again. This time, it was the knuckles that brought me down and it hurt like all hell. I cried out, my head took quite a bit of the fall, sending panicked pain signals pulsing through my body. I didn't want to get up, I couldn't. It hurt like fucking hell. I wheezed loudly and held my burning face. There was blood in my mouth, it coated my tongue with its rusty bitterness. I looked at the man standing above me with my pathetically beaten eyes. Once I went down, the only person left for him to be angry at was himself. First, he looked of utter rage. Then he weakened into confusion, then realization then awful, awful pain. And finally, his legs couldn't carry the weight anymore.

If you've ever seen a pillar topple, it goes something like this. It stands there tall and strong, seemingly unmovable. It begins slowly, just tilting comfortably, bringing on a subtle essence that something has gone wrong. The next part is very quick. It deteriorates as if it had been made of sand the whole time. It all must come down. It is either stronger than a tsunami or weaker than a light breeze. Every bit must crumble, it must cease its entire being or nothing can be built in its place. Just like a pillar, the great man broke down. In his crumbling, there were calls for his lost love, there was begging, pleading, bargaining. Anger, resentment, fear, it all came in due time while I sat by and watched.

He told me not to look at him. Sometimes he threatened and other times he begged. He couldn't stand the idea that Feliciano could see him. He wanted to hide from the shame he had created but I refused to let him. I just watched silently as the ghost of a man took the full loss of his love.

He finished when he didn't have a tear left to cry. Those sad blue eyes fearfully met mine. "When will you have had enough?" I asked him softly. "When will you be done with this hate? When will your denial be forgotten? Speak. Now is not the time to fall to silence."

"Why… Why did you come here?"

"To fight and kill the fear I hated most. For selfish reasons, to prove to myself that there would be hope for Antonio, to see that hate is not an eternal binding of the soul."

"So it's the natural boy, Antonio?"

I cursed myself. "What of it."

"Figures."

"You had guessed?"

"I had a hunch." The tired man corrected.

"But how?"

He smiled the smallest bit. "Don't forget that the face you have, _I used to kiss it_. I know its look of sadness and happiness and I can certainly tell when it's looking at the one it loves."

"He looked at you in that way?"

His smile became wider as the nostalgia drifted back to his mind which so sorely needed the good memories he had been depriving himself of. I could almost hear his mind's sigh of relief. "He did. All the time. I can see it still."

"It's funny how they remain, the images. You never think you would remember the things you do."

"I can recall his eyes, his ears, the sound of his laugh. _So clearly_. I can't remember that last time I willed myself to bring it back. I feared that I might have forgotten."

"That's impossible. You never forget love once you've had it." I picked myself up off the ground and he followed suit. There were enough hurt people in the world and I was done being one of them. I brushed myself off only to find that I was leaking more blood than expected. Ludwig rushed me off to the bathroom then sat me on the toilet and began to clean my face.

"Ludwig?" I asked.

"What?"

"Can we go somewhere? This place is too sad, it needs to air out for a while." Then I witnessed the first ever original Ludwig Beilschmidt smile that was meant for Lovino Vargas.

"Yeah. I need some fresh air." He finished cleaning me up and tried to apologize multiple times but I wouldn't have it. I did what I had to do and so did he, there would be no more crying and yelling, it would all be forgotten. "I was so consumed with loss that I didn't even realize what I was. I guess I still am."

"You're not bad, Ludwig. You're just mourning, it's natural."

"I didn't think I could actually hurt you, though. I was worried but I thought I was a different person."

"You _are_ a different person. It's over. I'll not be troubling myself over events of the past and I suggest that you don't either."

"How did you become like this? What makes you just understand the world with ease?"

I smiled. "The secret is, I _don't_ understand the world. I just pretend I do and wait for things to work themselves out. _Like a salmon._ I swim upstream even though it's hard as hell and I have no idea why I do it other than it has to be done. I just keep doing it and it sucks and I hate it but in the end, it'll have been the right decision. No one really sees the big picture. We all just swim. Like the salmon, we swim without knowing that our struggle is noble or that it perpetuates the species, we just go."

We got our jacket and headed out to the docks. Our faces both desperately needed the cold air. Mine because of the burning pain from my beating and his because of all the hot tears that had washed away his face. I liked the dock. I liked the worn wooden panels of differing colors and how they whined quietly under our footsteps. I likes how the breeze smelled of salt and how the waves broke up into choppy pieces of a musical number. They crashed against the dock, sending small sprits of cold water onto my face. I kept fingering the pin in my pocket.

"I used to take Feliciano here. He liked to swim in the river so much more than the pool so I used to bring him here and pull him back to shore when he wandered."

"I wish I had a little of what he had."

The boy laughed. "You do. Not much, but you do. You both are wise beyond your years, you both fight until you win. I can see that giving up was not in the gene pool."

I shook my head. "I'm not as brave as I pretend to be."

"Neither was he. He was such a coward yet, if he wanted something, he would get it."

"He, Ludwig? Complete this sentence, the most important things in life are…"

"What for?"

"Just do it."

He thought. "Futile. They come and go without giving you enough time to even realize that they were there." Hard wind came forcing me to ground myself harder and tuck tighter into my jacket. "That boy of yours, Antonio…" He spoke as if concealing a secret hidden behind the seven-letter name, "If you have things to say, say them before you're too late."

"Do you know something I don't?" I asked, my curiosity overwhelming me.

He sighed. "I know a lot you don't know, a lot regarding losing the one you love. Don't wait, not if you can help it."

I still felt unsure. "Do you know something about Antonio?"

"Just…" He sighed again. "If he wants you to listen to him, do it without prejudice. That's all."

"But-"

"That's all." He repeated.

I backed down, leaving a good deal of room for silence. Ludwig put an end to it by digging out of his pocket a small cut of ribbon and handing it to me. "Where'd you get it?" I looked it over. It was blue, the color most known for trust and peace. I handed him my white one, ironically known for its purity and innocence.

"An old friend of mine. She gets them from the reservation." I was reminded of Rosalind. I underestimated how many people were sneaking onto the reservation. "Antonio doesn't mind?"

"We've had an exchange of our own." A thin blush rose to the cheeks of my companion. "God! Not like that, you pervert!"

"I wasn't thinking about anything!" He said in defense.

"What, then? Did you and Feli ever get that far?"

I could see that the difficulty was still there, he still fidgeted and bit his lip when asked about the younger one but at least he could allow himself to remember. "No, we didn't. I was too afraid… back then, it seemed like our relationship was so young but now I can see that I had all the time in the world to tell him how I really felt. I was just afraid."

"You were young, you two were just kids, weren't you?"

"Ya, we were both twelve when it was over and ten when it started. It was so quick."

"Ludwig? If the same thing happens to me, can you… can you make sure I'm not recreated?"

"I can't make any promises that big." He looked out into the unsettled river, it danced up with the sky, trying to free itself of its gravitational compounds.

"Can you _try_?"

Waves crushed against another and against the dock like drunkards, creating a hissing symphony to fill the silence. "I can try." He finally agreed.

"And for Antonio-"

"Why me? Why is it _me_ that you pin your final wishes too?"

"Because you won't stand there and give me bullshit like everyone else. If you say you'll try, then I know that you'll try. I trust a man who knows loss." I took my hand from the pin in my pocket and began to softly run my fingertips along the blue ribbon that I had tied to my beltloop.

"I thought we still hated each other."

"What have I to hate about you?"

"The fact that_ I_ hate _you_."

"Yeah, well, that's a common epidemic around here." I shoved both my hands back into my pockets.

"Is your face alright."

"Never felt better."

"So why is that you're so forgiving? Why do you trust me yet allow me to hate you?"

"I guess I'm just swimming upstream and it's hard as hell."

"_God_." He muttered, his breath leaving as a thin cloud of steam. "Sometimes, the similarities kill me."

"Am I really so much like him?"

He nodded. "Yeah… yeah, you are."

"So you'll take care of Antonio for me?"

"What do you want me to do?"

"Just let him be. Let him cry and mourn. Let him be angry. Let him scream and kick and fight all he wants but when the time has come for his anger to end, force it out of him. Do not let him forget his smile, don't let him hide away from the sun. By whatever means necessary, _wake him up_."

"And why would I do that?"

"I'd consider it an act of reciprocity, wouldn't you? I'd say you owe it to me."

"What if I disagree?"

I looked directly at him. "Then I'll drag my tired, old, soul to your room every night and rip the hair out of your head while you're sleeping."

"That's all well and good, haunt me with your evil spirit, but I can't _make_ him do anything. He'd have no reason to listen to me."

I looked back out at the water, a gust of salty air blowing my bangs back from my face. "Antonio is a good person by nature, he'll go to you if you give him the opportunity."

"How about you just don't die, huh? Stick around and save the poor boy's heart." I knew from his voice that the response was not aimed at me. I responded regardless.

"My parents made me into a swimmer. They tossed me right into the river and I taught myself by instinct how to live. They gave me to the treacherous waves that gulped me right up as if they were waiting. They gave me right over to the world that never wanted me and I learned how to use everyone's predisposed hate for me to stay afloat."

"What do you mean?"

"I never wanted to be alive. I never wished to exist someday and neither did the Earth that is now my home. I came here with people already hating me, I was born into a world that didn't want me but I used that to toughen myself. I'm a strong swimmer, I don't plan on going down. I'm not going to die if I can help it. Still, I never learned how to see the future. Maybe there will be a current that's just too strong, maybe I'll get swept away without even the chance to realize what's happening. If it comes to that, I'm electing you to teach Antonio how to swim. Make him strong, teach him to stay afloat."

The world was tired, it moved by slowly as we stood there. The wind blew on, not minding that we were in the way. Spits of river water jumped up to stick to our clothes and faces. My companion spoke. "I'll try."

Some children were lucky enough to be born into steady waters, some parents worked them in one toe at a time, preparing them for the waters that lay before them. I was never that lucky. When I was born into this world, the waters were cruel and course. They threw me right in and let me show myself how to live in this world. The truth was, it hurt like hell. "Thank you." I whispered.

I cupped his cheek and used my thumb to push away the one tear that he had saved. "It's hard, I know. He never _meant_ to leave you."

"I know. But I can't help blaming him. Why couldn't he have just _lived_, the idiot! Then I could stop feeling like it was my fault."

"_I don't know…_"

He put his arms around me so I did the same. For what we swore would be the last time, we mourned the loss of my brother.

And so time passed as it always does. I explained the bruise on my cheek as being a loose board on the dock though I doubt anyone bought it. My parents didn't question it, they were secretly glad that Ludwig was being strict with me while Antonio did _nothing but_ question it. I think he finally gave up, knowing that I did what I had to for reasons he would never know. Over the next few days, I saw Antonio more often and grew more in love with the boy. I couldn't have stopped myself. Not even if I wanted to. The boy knew just how to tempt me so I let myself be tempted . Each day I grew more willing to kiss him until I found myself yearning for it even when he wasn't around. I attended the troubled youth group twice more by my mother's request and was pestered by Rosalind twice more. She never stopped tormenting me with her suspicions about my escape, I pitied the man who's ribbon she wore. As for _my_ ribbon, Antonio had asked me not to wear it when we were together so I didn't. He was pretentious like that sometimes but I allowed it, too in love with the poetic justification he gave for the act. It was something like, "My eyes look nowhere else but to the doubt that you latch around your belt loop. Please, for my sake, remove it so that I may give my attention rightfully to your eyes." It was hard for us to move around together but we managed it a few times, going out to the river to swim or eating tomatoes (which I was able to do) under the birch trees. He played his guitar for me, I sand along with the words he gave me, we spent our hours together in discussion of books and birds and burning hearts. Days were nothing to us, when we were together, time was monitored by how long it was until I had to leave. When we were apart, the only minutes that mattered were the ones we were counting down until we would see each other next.

While napping in the leaves once cool day, I decided to ask the question that still lay in my mind. "Antonio."

"Mm-hm?"The lazy boy replied.

"What's most important in life?"

"What do you mean?"

"Complete the statement. The most important things in life are…"

He chuckled. "Tell me what you think it is first."

"I don't know for sure, I haven't got a good answer. For me, I think maybe it's just being alive so that I'll have more time to find my answer. What about you?"

He propped up his torso and put an arm on either side of me so as to look down with that kind smile of his. "_Invisible_." He whispered and pulled my face into a deep kiss. I didn't know how he could love me the way he did, how he could see my chaotic eyes as beautiful or my messy hair and fondle-worthy. Yet he did and proved it through the soft rubbing of our lips. We each pulled away softly, our eyes still locked on each other. "We cannot see the things that are most important. The things like life, love, and happiness. Ironic, isn't it? These things are the most important yet we will never be able to set our eyes upon them. That's why so many people believe that they don't exist but I am not one of those people, Lovino. I have you. _You showed me all of the invisible things_."

That was the day I fell all the way to the bottom of the abyss. Right there in Antonio's arms, under his lips, listening to his breath, feeling his heart, I fell _completely_ in love with him.

Our time was peaceful but not perfectly. My boy, like all humans, did not go without ailments. He came to me each day more tiresome. When I asked why, he said it was the memories. They wore at him, they injected sadness into his otherwise happy life. I would comfort him with small signs of affection touching his hand or kissing his hair which, without fail, brought him back to his usual smiling self. It troubled me but he begged me not to be so concerned. He said he was fine and that sometimes his mood just dampened. He kissed away by worries until we both forgot what was ever worth being sad about. One day, a week and a half before our planned date of departure, he came through my window looking his worst yet. His weak form sat beside mine on the bed where I was previously reading.

"Lovino." Was all he said, his shame-filled eyes sinking into his lap. The feeling of fear began to collect in my stomach.

"Say more." I demanded in a low voice.

"We need to go to the reservation, I need to take you there."

"What for?"

"People…people need your help…" He folded his hands in his lap and gave them his focus. Confusion was my first reaction. We never talked much of the reservation nor of people needing my help.

"Mine? What is my help? I know nothing of the ailments of naturals. I have nothing for those people."

"You're the only one who has what they need. Lovino, please, just…don't ask questions. Come with me, please."

I was terrified. Antonio was not a quiet boy, his silence alone was all the warning I needed. I was also afraid because I was certain that, whatever the naturals wanted, I didn't have. I nodded my head knowing that it was all I could do, like a salmon swimming hard as hell without knowing where it was going. He took me with him and we quietly headed off for the forested land. I was never afraid of the dark until that night, until I had reason to suspect an unknown evil hidden in its overtaking fog. My chest felt tight. I reminded myself how to breath.

Our steps in the dry leaves were thick and uneasy but we treaded on. The tension was palpable, the darkness was suffocating. I grabbed the familiar hand of my tan boy and weaved my fingers through his. He looked back at my tender frame and shook the illness from his face to replaced it with a comforting smile. "You don't have to be strong, not always. Not now. If you're afraid, it's alright."

My breath was captive in my throat, I didn't know how to speak to him. I told my lips to smile back but it lasted no longer than a moment. He strengthened his grip on my hand and smiled more convincingly. "I wouldn't let bad things happen to you, not if I could help it. Surely you can believe that my motives are good for bringing you here."

I nodded. He smiled. "It's really best if someone else explains but I'll tell you maybe just a little bit, just to give you some starting ground." I nodded again. What was there to explain? What had been kept from me? "Well…where to start… well, you know how, when you first mentioned leaving, I said that I knew a man who could help you with the chip? He was a runaway from the city, he lives in secret on the reservation now, helping the natural people. When he first came to the reservation, it was because he had done a bad thing." I could see us approaching the lights of houses. The brave children watched our arrival and others peek out from behind wash basins and flowed boxes. "He had committed a crime against the city, Lovino. He hacked the system, he stole some very important things from the lab too. Ever since then, we've been hiding his secrets until the right time. Him and his followers, they've been preparing, waiting, watching, learning. They say that now is the time. That's why they want you."

"What are they going to do to me?" I wasn't sure if the words had even left my mouth, they were so dry and small.

"You don't have to worry, I promise."

"Tell me."

"They want to ask you some things…" He told me with an easy tone. His voice betrayed him. He knew that there was more and he thought he was sparing me when actually, I was dying of oblivion.

"I'll be okay?" I asked finally.

"You'll be okay." The soft voice confirmed. We walked. Some houses turned on their lights as we neared. Mother's nursed their late-waking infants on the porch and fathers were shutting the blinds good and tight. I watched the curious tikes whisper at each other, catching the world "little" every once in a while. I wished that they would stay outside for a while longer because their presence made me feel like this was less of a secretive deal.

"_You'll_ be okay?" I added, feeling selfish.

So small a laugh escaped his lips. "I'll be okay."

We neared wherever he was taking me, I could tell by the change in his body language. "I want to say now that I'm sorry."

"What for?"

"For whatever is to come. The truth is, my dear Lovino, there are secrets that I haven't been able to tell you. It's so much bigger than you think it is."

"_What_ is?" I was never answered. My hand fell limp in his as we approached a barn. It was an old rotting thing with just a few dim lights visible from the open doorway. _The open doorway_. I couldn't take my eyes from it or the figure who lingered under it.

There he stood, looking the same as when he left me. Hair dark like a crow's, catching a glimpse of chestnut under the light's shadow. His eyes, blue like the brightest ocean, glittering as they looked upon me. He was still tall, still lanky, still scruffy. A smile, a thin one, perked up on his face in the gentle way that smiles always had. I wondered if his image were a trick of the lighting or a hallucinated memory. He opened his mouth and let the voice that I knew so well once again touch my ears. "My… I left just when you were growing the most. My apologies. But, I think that you might forgive me."

_Marxi._


	7. The Color White

The Daisy Genocide

_My Admiration and Disgust of the Color White_

I found myself in his arms. I did not leap or run or fly into them, I walked towards him and he caught me. I didn't smile nor did I cry or act surprised. It was like I had temporarily shut down until my brain could rap around the reality of the situation, I had stopped swimming until a direction could be found.

His arms were real, his breath was real, his beating chest, his relieved laugh. He was _there._ "I can't believe it." He laughed. I looked up at his face which both cried profusely and smiled intensely at the same time. "You've grown so tall," was all he managed to say before being caught in another fit of tear-stained laughter.

I moved with zombie-like oblivion, brushing tears away from his watery blue eyes. "Who are you?" I mumbled numbly, barely recognizing that I was even speaking.

"I'm the same person I was seven years ago, only…I'm seven years older now."

"_Marxi_?" My mouth mimicked his name for my tense vocal chords that couldn't remember how to make sound. "You're _alive_?"

Tears welled up in his glassy blue eyes again and another throaty laugh was dredged up his crying throat. "_It's me, Lovino_."

My numbness fell away as I grappled onto the boy and cried tears that I had held back for years because it was_ him_. The reader, the rebel, the radiant, he was _back_. At the moment, I didn't bother to question how or why that was possible, I just forgot reality for a moment at let myself believe that he really did come back from the dead. He held me back and sobbed with laughter while all I could get out were sharp, staggering breaths. Finally he pried me away from him. "Come on, inside." He ushered me into the barn and my subconscious forced me to look back and check that the forgotten boy was still with us. He was much more serious but he flashed me a smile and followed us in, closing the door behind himself.

Marxi and I sat on barrels of hay across from each other, a few kerosene lamps between us. Antonio sat hip-to-hip with me as an awkwardness filled the space. We looked around, inspected, shuffled, rubbed our noses and scratched our cheeks. "Are you comfortable?" The dead boy finally asked. "I know it's a bit cold but it can't be helped. Are you hungy? I have salmon cakes in my bag, you could have some-"

"I'm fine."

"Okay. Well, I mean, I you need anything, there's a blanket right behind you."

"It's okay."

"So… you're taller now." He nodded and laughed at his own observation.

A crooked smile managed its way onto my face as I nodded. "Seven years will do that." I didn't feel like we should be talking about what we were talking about. The words were dry and used as they exited our mouths, meaning close to nothing.

Our of obligation, I picked up the blanket and laid across mine and Antonio's laps. He didn't notice, he was too busy wearily inspected the flame. "Marxi?" He asked, "Is it okay to have those in here?"

He nodded. "This hay doesn't catch fire, they had that genetically altered away before I was even born."

Antonio took my hand and I gratefully held it back. I wasn't sure if I were alive or not, if I were breathing or not, if I were awake or deep asleep. I clung to Antonio. "_You _should explain." The Spaniard offered.

"I wish I could but…_hell_… where do I even start?"

"Start at the part where you died." I suggested without an ounce of sarcasm.

He smiled apologetically. "You were young…I'm so sorry…"

"I _held_ you. I saw your _blood_, they dragged you away to a van! _Your name _is _banned_!"

"I was helped. They took me to a place, I don't know where." The boy found ways to appease the awkwardness by brushing at the unintentional stubble on his face or raking a hand through his discombobulated hair. "I was supposed to die but a man there was a supporter of the revolution. He stole my body during the night and brought me here. I don't know how I survived but I did."

"Why didn't _I_ know about this! If you were supposedly alive this whole time, why didn't anyone tell me!"

"We didn't tell anyone, not even Mill."

"Is Mill-"

"He's gone." Marxi nervously wetted his lips and clasped his hands. "Mill is gone."

"But…but…_I don't understand_…"

"The things you don't know and the things I'll tell you are almost identical. It's a dangerous thing that's happening here, I'm not involving you any more than I have to."

"Wait! If there _really_ is a revolution happening here than I will not sit by!"

"No, you'll leave with Antonio on Sunday." The hand holding mine gripped stronger.

I looked at him with sudden skepticism that he didn't deserve. "What's _your_ role in this?"

"Antonio has involved himself purely on your account." Marxi interjected. "People have been talking about a certain pomaig boy, it was Antonio who found me and demanded that you not become a subject of rebellion trading."

"_Trading?_" I spat.

"You're father… he's important. People here don't like him and they heard about a boy who was too close for comfort, you knew too much, you were an enemy."

"But I know nothing!"

"You know more than you think you do. With your father's role, your history with me, and your regular trips to the reservation… people were becoming suspicious."

"You knew about that?" I was sure no one was watching all those times I had hid away with a book among the trees.

He nodded. "They wanted to capture you and use you as hostage to gain ground with your father."

"Like _he_ would care."

"Regardless, this revolution… it was a long time coming and you were a threat, however small. There were people who just didn't want to risk it. Antonio became your advocate, swearing up-and-down that you were pro-revolution. He worked to keep you happy in your home, he helped you like I never could. So we managed to settle everyone and implemented spies."

"Spies?"

" , The Beilschmidts-"

"What have the Beilschmidts got to do with this!?"

"Lovino, please understand that everything you're hearing is confidential. These people are good people and it would be terrible if you tipped anyone off to anything."

Antonio spoke up. "He doesn't tattle, I swear!"

"I know." Marxi smiled to reassure me. "But there are lives on the line."

"I understand."

"Artillery." He finally admitted. "They supply, that's their gig. As soon as we heard that your parents were going to marry you off, we had somebody get in the system and make sure you would be sent to them, just to ensure that our secrets stay with people we trust."

"What about Rosalind?"

"She was just there to confirm Antonio's claims about your plans to run away, her testimony did you a huge favor."

I looked to Antonio, telling him in silence about my fear. The people I knew, the things I thought were coincidence, they were all planted in my life to keep me silent. What parts of me were real? How often was I watched? How often were people evaluation my innocence? I felt used and confused and crooked. "Are _you_ real?" I mumbled to the boy with clear emerald eyes who looked back at me with a twinge of sadness.

"Of course, my love, _of course_." He mumbled, his words aching.

"Do you really love me?" I don't know why my lips could suddenly move on their own, revealing my most subconscious pains.

A deeper sadness inflicted him. _"How could you even ask me that?"_ The weary boy pulled my face to his and kissed passionately, wrapping one arm tightly around me and making me aware of how cruel my questions had been.

"I'm sorry." I whispered when he pulled his lips away, my voice full of guilt. I hated apologies half because I never knew the words that wanted to be heard and half because I could never say it in a way that made it seem like I meant it. But how selfish had I been? How could I think otherwise? After all he had done, all the promises we'd made, all the times we had shared our secrets and kissed under my bed sheets. How could I ever accuse that boy of not loving me? It was a terrible insult. "Would you forgive me?"

A pure, unadulterated smile slipped up his cheeks. I had never seen Antonio Fernandez Carriedo's face shadowed by a frown for longer than eight seconds. "You didn't have to ask. You know that I could never be angry at my Lovino." I thought that must be a lie. To never be angry with someone? Impossible? Then again, Antonio's mind is a place of unexplainable wonders. I played along.

"Even when he says stupid things?"

"_Especially_ when he says stupid things." He smirked and kissed me again.

"And so the lonely boy has found a companion, I see. I thought to suspect it after seeing the way Antonio spoke of you."

"If by companion, you mean pain in the ass, then definitely."

"This particular pain in the ass is especially trust worthy. I think you can sleep easy knowing that when it's time to leave, you will be well protected."

"I'm not leaving." I corrected.

"_Yes,_ you are." The two older boys insisted.

"If this rebellion exists and you are not an apparition, then I will not run like a coward away from the battle that will challenge the very foundations that I've fought my _whole life_."

"It is not running nor is it cowardly." Marxi interjected. "Antonio and myself have already settled things. He's going to take you away the night before."

"Have I no say in these _settled_ things? Is my fate not my business!?"

"By fate, do you mean death?" Marxi's voice was suddenly harsh. "Death is what lies beyond, there is no heroism that you can put behind it. It is bloody soldiers and guns and pain and death."

"So you'll willingly allow hundreds of these people to be slaughtered?"

"They volunteered, Lovino. Every person who stands with me that fateful day knows what they face. They know that it is likely that they will not live to see another day, that they will _die _but they also know that there lies the honor is a well-served life."

"Then why not let me stand there too! I can load a gun, I can walk forward."

"You're too smart, Lovino. You're just _too damn smart_. You're not going to die at the hands of some emotionless politia officer, your young life has possibilities beyond those that these people could ever understand. You're going to go somewhere else and tell them of the collapsing city. Warn them of the past, make them see the danger hidden within what they call _perfection_."

"Is that some bullshit way of saying I'm too young?"

"No." His eyes looked me dead on. "There are children preparing for this war who are no higher than my knee. It's not your age, it's your wise eyes that keep me from letting you on that battle field. You're our diplomat to the future. You're our warning to the world who likely doesn't even know of our existence."

"Why are you doing this? What have we to lose if the world cares nothing for us?"

"You know better than anyone the answer to that. You know exactly what there is to lose but in case you've forgotten, let me remind you. Discrimination down to a science, children forced into slave-like repetition of lives that were never theirs, mindlessness, knowledgeless, brain-washed, experiments run on innocents, others cast into seclusion and still more locked up like cattle. _That's_ why we're doing this."

"What if I'm not all you expect me to be? What if I'm not as smart or courageous or strong as you need me to be? What if I _am_ all those things but I'm snatched up by a wild beast or the polio virus before I have the chance to see another human being?"

"There is nobody I trust more with this task." He reassured me. "I can never be sure of what the future brings but I am sure that you are a strong spirit. So little can stop such a fierce will."

"And what, after all of this, if nothing has changed? What if the rebellion is relinquished and everyone forgets? What then accounts for these deaths?"

He shrugged. "A man who lends his hand to a rightful cause is justified in failure. Win or not, I've given my life in attempt. If there were more I could give, I would."

"Fight with knowledge! Do to them what you did to me, make them realize the truth with speech and passion!"

"We cannot flip a table just by willing it to do so, we must use force. If this were a war that could be fought with words then it would have already been won."

"So you and Rosalind and those tikes playing in wash basins, you'll all be dead? The Beilschmidts? Little Harzetta, Mother, Father, Ludwig, the sickly one? This is their last week of life?"

"It's a risk they take. Some may live and others will perish, it is the course their lives will run."

"_Run_? Like me? I'll be running, leaving all those hundreds to give their lives. I'll be eating canned peaches while bones are snapped. I'll be sleeping under oaks while blood is spilled and flesh is burned."

"Don't do that to yourself." Antonio chimed in.

"Don't pretend that you will feel nothing! How do you expect to jump over that fence on Sunday night knowing the fate we'll be leaving for our loved ones?"

"I'll be looking at the boy at my side and think, _Damn, he deserves better_. That's what will get me through. I cannot feel useless when I'm protecting you. I cannot feel guilt by choosing your life over hundreds of others. Selfish as it is, it's true. This war, it's victims, it's survivors, they do not mean to me what you do." Our eyes became interlocked. How did he do it? How did he ease even the worse of my worries just with a glance?

I looked back to the rebel. "So you ask me to survive a war. Is that all? Is that my burden?"

"No, not completely."

"Then what? I have nothing to give but my life which you've already refused."

"We need information."

"Ask away."

"Not from you, from your father. His office is in the home, right?"

The sweat on my neck went cold. "That's right."

"We need you to find us some codes that will allow us to enter his work facility."

"So, you're going to kill him?"

The boy said nothing but diverted his eyes and bit at his lip.

"You are."

"It's not personal, Lovino, _I swear_."

"He's a good man… he never tried to be a bad man, it was just bred into him. He's the best father he knows how to be…"

"We know, Lovino. We don't blame him. You're right, he didn't choose this for himself, fate did. It was fate who told him what world he would be developed in. I wish-"

"_He's still a good man_." I didn't notice how my vision had clouded over and my speech become shaky. "He used to take baths with me and brush my hair. He was the one who taught me how to read… and he used to put me to bed…and…a-and he used to kiss my mother. _He never meant to do bad things_…"

I was held by Antonio who let me silently sob into his chest. I hated the man when he was alive but now that he was dead, or almost dead, I remembered things I had ignored for the sake of hating him. He had loved me, he still did. He just wanted me to be successful, everything a young boy should be. He loved my mother and he loved my brother. He worked hard, he kissed our heads, he taught us what he knew of happiness.

My mother too, so innocent. She was but a lamb, unknowing of the world's ugliness. She'd only ever wanted to give care. She wanted to keep her house clean and warm for her family, she wanted to be a loving wife and nurturing mother. She didn't deserve what was going to happen. The lamb would be forced to watch as her happiness was uprooted. Her neat picket fence would be covered in blood, bodies would be laid at her doorstep to make her realize an evil she never meant to contribute to. The soundisome wouldn't be able to drown out the screams, the white walls would watch her crumble into the skeleton of a woman.

What people never understand about war is that there is never a villain. Every person who's lended their hand to evil did so thinking that it was the best choice. All the deaths were of good people. People who did their best to make peace. There is such excitement that comes with war, such a surge of strength. Sun chasers. They run at the horizon, an imaginary line that recedes as you near it. They chase death. No one wins, one side loses worse. In the end, there is only death and the echo of death.

Antonio pulled me into his lap, covered me with the blanket, held me tight and shushed me as I took in the intensity of war. My mother, my father, the grieving man, the pesky girl, the rebel, all of them. Tots pulled from their cradles, people with tired eyes and wrinkled skin. Everybody's mothers, everybody's fathers. The only world I had ever known would be slaughtered.

"When they go," I mumbled through repressed sobs, "In their bed. That's my condition. I'll get the info. When they go, they'll go together, silently, in their sleep. That's my condition."

"Okay." Marxi agreed.

They tried to let me finish mourning but it was no use. I couldn't stop. I eventually evened my breath enough to speak steadily again. Every time I thought I had forgotten, I remembered and the tears would come on their own. I wasn't strong like Marxi expected me to be. All I could do was stay curled up like an idiot in Antonio's lap with my swollen eyes and red nose. "Is that all you need? I want to go home."

"I think you should stay a bit longer. Until you've settled just a bit more."

I nodded.

"Lovino?"

I swallowed a shuttering sob and nodded again.

"Lovino, _I'm sorry_. This is hard, I know. More pain than any human should have to endure."

"You die in my hands then come back seven years later to tell me that the world is going to hell. It's a bit of a shocker."

"Are you okay?"

"I want to go home." I whimpered. How stupid, resorting to a childish need to be embraced by my mother and tucked into familiar sheets. I coughed up a few hard sobs. The arms around me took me in closer until there was no more room in my shell.

"I'll take you home, I promise." Antonio's soft voice soothed. "I'll take you away, I'll take you to your bed and your sheets and your pillows. It'll be okay, I promise."

"Now?"

"No, not now. Very soon. So soon, my love."

"Why?"

"I need you to stop crying for me, okay? Then we can go."

"When I wake up… When I wake up… will this be gone?"

My question was not answered. Kisses began to shower over my hair and hot face. The person who wants to hold you even when you're pitifully begging to go home and shaking and crying and ugly after being drowned out with tears is the person who loves you most in the world. They're the person who wants to whisper kindly to you and kiss you and hug away the fear. Antonio was that person for me.

I did my best to hush my crying and even flashed him my tiredest smile that he accepted and stood me up slowly. Marxi could do nothing. I could tell that he wanted to, he wanted to _say_ something or _do_ something but there was nothing. I looked for comfort in Antonio, the one who loved me most in the world. Marxi opened the barn door for us and even whispered a small apology as we left but there was nothing else he could give us but a solemn hug.

"Are you okay?" The Spaniard asked.

"I've been better."

"Do you want to stay in my bed tonight?"

So badly. I wished more than anything that I could slip into the worn-smelling sheets beside the boy's warm body and just fall asleep in his arms. _I wished_ it were that easy.

"I can't."

"You think they'll notice?"

"I _know_ they will."

"Maybe I could stay with you tonight?"

Normally, I'd refuse. I wouldn't dare risk it. I let myself have my exception for the day I learned my world was ending, it couldn't get a whole lot worse. "Would you?"

"Of course, my love, of course."

"Toni…?"

"Yes?"

"I'm afraid."

"Not today, tomorrow we'll talk more about all of the madness but not now. Right now, think about something else."

"Is this why you've been so depressed recently."

"Yes, this is the reason. I love people too, it's not something anyone could look at with dry eyes."

"So you suffered all on your own? You didn't have a lover there to hold you like I did."

"I thought we were going to talk about something else."

"But-"

"You _were_ there, Lovino. Don't you remember? I came to you in the evenings and you kissed me until I forgot. You held my hand and spoke kindly and you were my greatest comfort. It's _you_ who gives me hope."

"I don't see how. People are seeing things in me that I don't have. They call me brave and wise and smart. I'm just _a person_, Antonio. I'm a coward just like everyone else. I'm not especially victorious in any way."

"Would you believe me if I told you that you are? You're just as strong and wise and smart as everyone calls you. I wish they knew of your kindness and passion too but_ I_ know and I can say that you are the kindest and most passionate person I've ever met. You're the best, most exciting, most fantastic trouble I have _ever_ gotten myself into."

"Oh_, please_."

"It's true! From the moment first saw you, way back in my borrowed memories, I always admired your rebelliousness. Your burning desire for something more. Then I met you and learned to love those things. I love your anger, I relish in its passion! I love your curses, they're poetry to this subservient, frost-bitten world! I love your love, how you keep the friendship of books so dearly and how you kiss so purely. Everything they say is true."

"Do they say that I am not afraid?"

"Nobody would say that. We all know fear and we know that god has never sent an immunity upon anyone. Every human that has ever lived is afraid."

"What about my father?"

"He is afraid."

"I know but what has he done to earn such hate?"

"That's something that I was told not to speak with you about… but who deserves to know more than you? I guess to put it simplest, he's what the rebels call A Carnage Maker. He works with human test subjects. Babies go into the lab, carnage comes out."

"So he kills people?"

"Some have survived."

"Are you one?"

He was silent for a little while. "It's possible. I don't know where I come from. I don't know why _I_ would be chosen to live. Lovino, we really ought to talk about something else now." The mass of trees was ending and the wide city-scape had come into view. "We will never talk about anything like this off of the reservation, okay?"

"Alright."

The city was dark, drowned with sleep. Inside the dormant houses were little families with little jobs and little talks. They didn't know. Eerier still, I had the feeling that the walls knew. The silent walls. They had watched with their pail eyes and said nothing. They watched us walk to my house in silence and climb in through the window, still they said nothing.

I changed into a night shirt, or as Antonio liked to call it, a dress. I cursed at him and told him that it was practical and that everybody wore one but he refused my protests. "What's practical is not having clothes especially for your unconsciousness. I don't find a need to put on a suit and tie so that I can toss around in my bed."

"Nakedness is something to be preserved, that's how it is."

"Come on, Lovi~ Take it off. It's so much more comfortable." He had already taken off his shirt and was hidden under my blanket.

"I'm leaving myself clothed, end of discussion." I lifted the covers and hopped in beside him.

"Am_ I_ allowed to be naked?"

"Boxers must be worn at all times." I warned. "Or I'll rip every curly hair out of your head.

The boy slipped out of his jeans. "You don't have to be afraid of your body."

"Why would I be afraid of it?"

"Some people are."

"I don't see why."

"Then take it off." He whined playfully and tugged at my sleeve.

"This is molestation! Leave me alone."

"Don't ask me to leave, I've just become comfortable."

I flicked on the soundisome and fell into his waiting arms. "Toni?"

"Yes?" He hummed against my neck, causing me to shiver.

"When I wake up… will this have all been a dream?"

"All? As in you wake up in another universe with other family and friends?"

"No, just today. Will I wake up and suddenly feel great relief, knowing that you had fed me a rotten tomato or I had smacked my head?"

"Well… we could give it the benefit of the doubt."

"You think so?"

"Sure."

"You know what I was thinking? Nobody ever cried for the Nazis and it's really god damn sad, you know that? They were people with hopes and dreams just like everyone else, they bled red blood just like everyone else yet nobody cries for them. To mourn them is considered a sin."

"That's the way history is. Someone's got to take the fall. There's got to be a good show and at the end, the good guy has to kill the bad guy, that's what people remember."

"I wish it weren't that way."

"That's the good thing about wishing, you can wish for anything you want, even the impractical things. For now though, just sleep. I want to see that Mona Lisa smile of yours when I awake."

"I'm not all that tired."

"What time is it?"

I glanced at the glowing digits on the low humming soundisome. "One on a Monday."

"Then it's time to sleep."

"Alright, fine."

The arms pulled me in closer and a face nuzzled against my back. We fell asleep like that. Four hours later, I was awake again. The soundisome was emitting this haunting scream. Antonio shuffled and raised his head, his curly hair sticking to his warm face. I heard the one down stairs scream too. The one in the office, the one in my parents' room, they called out in loud beeps. It was a warning, it had happened once before when there was an explosion at one of the labs and they told us to report to the clinic to determine if we were radioactive or not.

I quickly threw Antonio off the bed and forced the tired boy under it, despite his protests. "Quiet!" I hissed. I moved Feliciano's records under the bed to block the boy from view just in time for there to be a knock on my door. "Come in!" I fixed myself on my bed to look as innocent as possible.

"Honey?" My mother and father entered.

"Yeah?"

"Come downstairs, listen to the soundisome with us."

"Okay." I got up and left with them, making sure my door was closed tight. Father turned on the light and we sat together. After a minute more of blaring beeps, a stoic woman's voice began to speak.

"Attention. Attention, all citizens. Attention please. Due to the recent increase of crimes committed by the natural population, all natural-born citizens that have been registered as city-people in the last five years will be asked to return to planned housing in the reservation. All who refuse forced removal will be collected by the curvus denomination in one week. All pomaig-born and natural-born citizens with more than five years of registration are required to attend a seminar in the collective hall at seven o'clock a.m. this morning. Natural-born citizen with less than five years of registration are not permitted to attend. We apologize for the disruption, that is all."

It beeped for a minute longer, then the voice returned and repeated the same message. We listen for a couple of the loops, thinking and analyzing before father shut it off and began to walk upstairs. "Dress yourselves, we should arrive early." We all dispersed into our respective rooms. I sat on my bed.

"Toni?" I murmured after a bit of thoughtful silence.

"Yes?" A little voice answered.

"Come out."

He crawled out from under the bed and sat beside me, taking my hand in his. "I heard."

"You need to leave. Right now." He nodded and climbed up on my window sill but not before placing a kiss on either of my cold cheeks. "Toni."

"Yes?"

"Tell Marxi that I welcome the revolution and… and come back with the detailed list of whatever I can do to help."

"Alright… Are you okay, Lovino?"

"I've been better. Go. People will be leaving their houses soon, _go_." And he left off into the pail sunrise.

_So it had come to this._ One species exiling its brothers, moving them back to the primitive forest to starve. It was the first step in killing off the naturals, and one of many steps involved in our grand happiness façade. Suddenly, the rebellion sat more comfortably in my stomach. It was a war that longed for violence and by god, it would have its violence. It wanted death and we would give it what it wanted. We would feed it bodies until it grew so stuffed and sick that it would die and all the sinners would go with it. It had to be done before our crimes could get any bigger. It had to be done. It had to be done. It had to be done. It had to be done. _It had to be done._

We got there early. My mother wore her nice red dress, my father combed our hair back until we looked like clones of each other. There were politia everywhere which encouraged everyone to keep their lips tight. Hundreds of bodies jostled around in perfect, eerie silence. We waited with everyone else in the line to enter the hall. At the door, an officer waved a brick-lick scanner over my shoulder. It beeped, he read the screen, then ushered me in. _Chip reading_. The chip was my free pass to the good life, the only thing that separated me from every natural on the reservation. One piece of metal in my arm was the difference between wealth and poverty, love and hate, power and pity.

Inside, they took my family and I too a little room were the flash a light in our eyes and made us state our names, dates of birth, place of residence, and chip id number. My chip number was 16040, they told me it when I was five and once you've been told something once, you're expected to remember it for the rest of your life. They passed us on with front row assigned seating. Also in the first row I saw Rosalind, her dimidium, and their families along with the Beilschmidts and countless other familiar faces without names. I guess they wanted to make the message clear to all suspected rebel affiliates.

People chattered, fanned themselves nervously, inspected the large screens which were dead until finally given the task of showing a stranger's face as he entered the stage and stood at the microphone. "Welcome." He said in a strong, confident voice. Nobody knew him but that was no surprise, nobody knew anybody.

He was a well-groomed man of probably fifty or sixty years old. His full head of hair was greying fashionably, his deep eyes a dark color which I could not make out, his chiseled face calm yet serious, his suit nicely pleated. He was the ideal man. "No doubt, all of you are confused and rather stirred by the urgency in which this morning has begun. We apologize." We? Who's we? Who was addressing us? I was afraid. My mind wandered all of the possible tragedies that we could be gathered to witness. Maybe they would reveal the rebellion and bring up the young men responsible in hand cuffs. Antonio and Marxi would be there, their sad eyes watching me, awaiting a public execution. I tried to ignore all of these sick thoughts my subconscious was feeding me to no avail.

"I can assure you that you need not worry. We have called you all here today to discuss progressivism in our society. Brothers and sisters, the time has come to part ways with those who burden our ever growing society. The forest land is a place of our beginning, a place of discovery. The city lands are a place of innovation and renewal. We, city people, will move forward into an unknown, untraveled future. Now is the time to let our forest brothers discover themselves as we did when we were but a civilization of Neanderthals. Like us, they must learn the ways of technology. No longer can we nurse them. No longer can the man of science pity the man of nature. We, brothers and sisters, have become the next evolution of human kind and like our ancestors, we will thrive over our lessers.

A wall will be built come February, a wall that separates the two worlds. Here, we will focus our efforts on enterprise. We will learn to master the world, we will know the universe and be its comrade, we will teach our children a thirst for knowledge. In the forest world, they will scavenge and hunt and teach their youngers the brutality of the old world. Whether they flourish our parish can be no more of our concern. We concern ourselves only with becoming the strongest and smartest of our race. Our potential is dirtied by the forest-people. They will hold us back no longer!" Silence came from the attentive crowd. He continued his speech, convincing all the pomaigs that it was the right thing to do, they shouldn't feel guilty, and it was actually the naturals' fault for making us do this. He portrayed them as crime-committing savages who wanted to undermine our progression. It was an eat-or-be-eaten situation. If they were capable of being as smart as us then they would thrive and the wall could be taken down but if we were proven the better humans then they would die and evolution would run its course.

He finish by raising a hand, gesturing a wave goodbye, and calling, "Incomprehensibilis Potentia." The crowd repeated it drowsily. It was a sort-of motto meaning immeasurable potential. It had recently taken on a sick irony.

A woman took the stage as he left. She was in her thirties probably, her hair still bright and blonde and tied up in a neat bun. She had the same voice as the soundisome announcer. "All new laws enacted next week, January 8th, are as follows:

Cloning is prohibited to natural-born citizens. All career paths of notable scholarly merit are prohibited to natural-born citizens. Interaction with any forest-persons is punishable by law. Any citizen may be questioned at any time by any police or politia officers. Natural-born women may not be impregnated without first having her genetics tested for quality which must be done by a city-certified geneticist. Chips may not be removed from any citizen. Damaging your or another's chip information is punishable by law. All citizens must provide chip information upon request. That is all. Thank you. And as always, Incomprehensibilis Potentia." She raised her arm like the man before her but this time, a few people raised their arms back.

Lastly, the audience was asked if they had any questions or comments. Nobody said anything. Nobody stood and screamed out objections, nobody cried, nobody wondered if this were humane or ethical. We sat by like good little clones and waited to be released back to our homes, back to our white walls and text books. The silence made me want to vomit but then again, you could imagine the reaction to having solid matter in my stomach.

When it was over, Father excused himself, saying he had colleagues to speak with. Some people stayed to discuss with their neighbors those dirty, rotten naturals while the others sprinted home. "Oh, Lucy!" A man called as my mother and I were leaving. It was a police officer, the same one who would come over on weekend nights to talk with my mother about absolutely nothing.

"Oh, hello." She greeted back, her smile a little more weary than usual.

"Nasty business, those naturals."

"I had always known they were trouble. They just don't understand things like we do."

"That's the truth. They're lazy and when they bother to get out of bed, it's to rob the innocent city people who've done nothing but patiently tolerate their weakness. I say good riddens."

"Yes, good riddens. I don't want an influence like that around my family."

"Well, not that I'm really supposed to be telling you this but there have been some… _instances_ in the city where people were getting sketchy. We're thinking there are some sympathizers, some _hippies_ and whatnot. Always on with their peace keeping mumbo jumbo."

"Well, hopefully the wall will put an end to that and get them back on track with productive lives."

He looked right at me. "Hopefully. Else we might have to take some precautions. We don't want a few bad apples to spoil the whole cart."

"You're right." I agreed with a smile. "They just don't know how to be thankful." I said while thinking about his house lit on fire. The sirens would start screaming for his fat ass to get out of bed, chemical sludge would pour from the ceiling while he hobbled along to safety. I smile just the tiniest bit wider.

"I'm glad you agree." He papped my shoulder. "Everyone slips up in their youth. They start getting ideas, they want to do things they shouldn't. We all come around."

"We certainly do." My mother interjected. "I'm sorry Officer but we really must be getting home. Lovino and I have an appointment to have our hair cut and we really can't be late."

"Don't go gett'n too pretty now, ." He said jokingly before tussling my hair and letting us leave.

"I'm getting a haircut?" I asked as we walked.

"Yes, I forget to tell you that I had scheduled an appointment. I thought it was getting a little long. Besides, a change would nice."

"Alright."

So I let them wash, dry, and cut my hair so that it was neat like a young man's hair ought to be. It wasn't wild and unruly or anywhere near as free as the curly locks of Antonio's. They handed me a mirror when they had finished so I could see my own face look back at me.

_Who was_ the boy looking back at me? What were his goals in life? Did he have any? What was most important to him? What made him happy?

He was not his brother. He was not Feliciano Vargas, not anymore. Never again would he study nerve cells, never again would he live for a dead boy on borrowed time, that life was far away from him. Now it was _his_ time. The bones in his body were _his_, the blood was _his_, the heart, the brain, the kidneys, the eyes, _all his_ and he planned to do something pretty god damn amazing with them. He was done filling a role and squabbling in fear. He was done with the crying and mourning, he was done being anyone else.

This is how Lovino Vargas became somebody.


	8. The Carnage Makers

The Daisy Genocide

_The Carnage Makers_

"You know, if you want your boyfriend to kill me, you could just ask him." The boy always sat so stiffly. He either believed there was a gun being held to the back of his head or he was just a very thoughtful person.

"He's not my boyfriend." I corrected as I emerged from the water gasping and shaking my head. "How long was that?"

He looked down at his watch. "Five minutes?"

"You weren't even watching!"

Ludwig and I had gone down to the pool. No one's there in the early hours, it's a good place to relax. Well, I relaxed while snooty-nose sat on a lounge chair and watched. On the ceiling was a reflection of the water's poetic movement, all around us echoed the song of churning waves, the smell of chlorine infiltrated our noses in a familiar way. Of course, Ludwig was not impressed. "I have other things to think about."

"Yeah? Like what? Like how you're going to organize your bookshelf or is that not until tomorrow."

"I'm thinking about how I'm going to explain this to Antonio."

"Explain what?"

"The bruises all over you! My god, you look like a train-wreck!"

"Tell him I fell down!"

"Ten flights of stairs!?"

"Tell him the truth then."

"Like that's any better. _Where were you? Why was Lovino alone? Why didn't you expect something like this?"_ For some reason, every Antonio impersonation I had ever heard consisted of a person's most dopey-sounding voice. Even I was guilty.

"Tell him it was my fault."

"That boy thinks that his precious little boy is capable of no sin."

I laughed. "Time me again?"

"What's the point of this?"

I shrugged. "Time me again."

"Fine. Go."

"Hold on! I'm not ready."

He sighed. "Tell me when you're ready."

I took a few deep breaths and called , "Ready!" before diving in. The water was always quiet, I liked to imagine that being under water was what it would be like on the moon, to be a constellation looking down on the Earth. It also gave my memories an opportunity to bloom behind my closed eyes.

I had gotten myself into some trouble. It started after my haircut when I went out into the world feeling like an invincible young man, which is a very dangerous way to feel. I went to the library just for the sake of being there and found myself utterly intrigued by the boy, Yolavin, who was known for being an especially strong but not mindful specimen. People of worse judgment might call him stupid and at the time, I was feeling a little shy on the side of rightful thinking.

The idiot just stared at the pages of his book as if they might awake and spell out for him what he was supposed to be understanding. He wasn't in the business of keeping the upstairs well lit. He was the perfect victim for a self-righteous, knowledge loving, asshole like me. I never said I was a kind person. "Yolavin." I said and sat down beside him at his table. "Penny for your thoughts? What are you reading of?" He had seen me watching him and chuckling from across the room so needless to say, he did not welcome my presence.

"The history of Cloning, now scram, Shirley." That nickname had been a favorite among children my age. It started just as Curly Top, referencing my tell-tale cowlick which was actually a beautiful, complicated, and expensive work of genetic engineering, not that those dipshits would know the difference. Curly Top became Little Shirley Temple became Shirley. Long story short, I couldn't possibly be nice to him after that.

"How is it? Interesting? _Exhilarating!?_ Do you think you might soil yourself with anticipation for chapter five, _The Implementation of ARK_? Spoiler alert, _it works_."

"Shut up, Shirley! You're just jealous."

"Yes, you're right. I am so very jealous. Tell me, Yolavin, have you read much fiction."

"That stuff is garbage."

"Just enlighten me, just for a moment."

"I read that one book, The Hitter in the Hay. "

"Are you by chance referring to The Catcher in the Rye?"

"What's it matter, it was terrible. Will you just bite it, now?" He filled his face with book.

But no, oh no, this was just too good. Lovino Vargas is a cruel man. "Why do you say that? The book, why didn't you like it?"

"It was just about some dumb kid wandering around the old world and saying how everything's so crumby. I don't know why people ever called that piece of trash a literary bible."

"Oh, I suppose you're right. You see right through its deceptive reviews, don't you?"

"_Yeah I do_." He laughed. The poor fool didn't even know when he was being teased. "Why do people even bother with fiction? Those characters never lived, those things never happened. I hope they start taking them out of the library or at least putting them up high were the small ones can't reach them. They're a bad influence."

"Right you are."

"I mean, no one ever reads them anyways. I only read that one because my teacher told me to."

"You have a teacher? I always thought your parents did home educating."

"Nope. I take classes on science, mathematics and Literature."

"Me too." I lied. I was born too smart. My father engineered me beyond that of any regular school boy.

"Oh yeah? Who're your teachers?"

I sighed with boredom and gave my attention elsewhere. "You wouldn't understand."

"Understand what?"

"It's nothing." I got up and walked out of the library, Yolavin following close on my heels.

"Understand what?" He called again.

"Really, it's nothing."

"Tell me." He said, pinning me against an alley wall.

A devious smile crawled up my face. "_Everything_." The boy looked at me with confusion. "See, I said you wouldn't understand."

"What does_ that_ mean?"

"It means that your pathetic pea of a brain could never _begin_ to comprehend the genius that you so elegantly called trash." I don't know why I wanted trouble so badly. Maybe because I had just realized that I was alive and I liked how pain could prove that. Maybe I just wanted excitement, I wanted something to happen, something hard and gritty and different than the plain cleanliness of white walls. Maybe the morning's announcement had ticked me off, maybe it had empowered me. Maybe I just wanted to get in a fight. God dammit, I just wanted to get in a fight!

And that I did. Well, to be accurate, I swung as Gorge of the Jungle beat his angry gorilla fists at me. "I'm surprised your were even reading, props to you. Though, I don't suppose you'll need any of that knowledge. After all, everyone knows you'll end up as cubby hugger." A cubby huger was a rude term for what job they give people who just don't come out as smart as they ought to be. They put a lab coat on them, stick them with real scientists, and cubby huger waits in the corner of the room all day until somebody asks them to fetch a scalpel.

That one got me a good four knuckles in the gut. I wheezed and held the injured spot. "Every one knows that _you're_ one of those hippie natural lovers!" I said nothing, only regained my posture and stood taller. "Well? Aren't you even going to defend yourself!?"

"Against what, pea brain!? At least I'm not a discriminatory prick like you! At least I have brain enough to know when the wool is being pulled over my eyes." I swung my fist up and actually managed to knick his shoulder. One of his hands pinned me against the wall and the other nailed into my still-sore stomach. I almost threw up. That would be bad.

"The stupid one here is you for believing that those filthy crooks are actually our equals! Monkeys like them are only good for picking fleas and shining my shoes! Is that what you want to be compared to? A sad, pathic, stupid, natural!? Well it suits you!" He landed another in the gut. " You've never really fit in here anywhere anyways. Figures that you'd be a natural lover!"

I glared at him and spat, landing a fat slug of saliva on his shirt. Naturally, this enraged him. My stomach took the beating, getting me closer still to loosing my stomach. I throat began to burn with the acids that were desperate to free themselves, I was going to vomit. I was going to vomit! "LUDWIG!" I called out loudly, just enough to strike fear into the heart of the boy. People knew about the silent fisherman. They said he killed his brother Gilbert and the pail man in the window was his ghost. I called out for him again, knowing he was nowhere near. I moved my hips in a way that drove attention to the ribbon. The second he caught sight of it, he ran.

I wiped the blood from my lip and went to the Beilschmidts house then quietly knocked at the front door. I didn't want my parents to ask about the injuries until I had given them some time to heal. Arno, the littlest child, was the one who opened the door and looked at me, unimpressed. "You're bleeding." He greeted. "I've never seen someone really bleed before."

"It's something you ought to see at least once in your life."

"Could I bleed too?"

"I suppose so, you have blood."

"Does it hurt?"

I thought about that. "Only sometimes. Right now, it feels pretty good."

"Why?"

"Dunno. Hey, can I come in?"

"Sure." He moved aside and I mumbled a thanks as I entered the house. I knew where they kept their wound-treating kit, or at least the one Ludwig had used on me so I helped myself to it. While I looked into the mirror and patted an alcohol swab against my bleeding brow, the sickly boy appeared.

"Make yourself at home." He mocked in the doorway.

"Thanks." I paid him no attention.

"You fell?"

"Something like that."

"That's the story you should go with. Luddy already in a pissy mood, I can't imagine that he'll see this as a ray of sunshine."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah. He's all locked up in the study talking to his imaginary friends. He didn't take this morning's surprise very well. I have the broken vases to prove it."

I finally turned away from the mirror to look at the boy. "You were there?"

"No, not me. Some police guy showed up and told me that they had made an exception. I stayed here and heard it on the box."

"Yeah, it was something."

"Need help there?" He offered, watching me as I attempted to tape a gauze patch over my cheek.

"No, I should really bite it before-"

But it was too late. "What the hell happened _to you_?" The German spat. He was undone. His hair had fallen loose from its typical gelled-down look, his shirt had been untucked and left to hang with crinkled stupor, his face had no definite expression other than a recent surge of annoyance.

"Fell." I explained and Gilbert shook his head in agreement.

"Don't bullshit me, Lovino."

I felt like I had become a friend of the man so I subsided and offered the truth with far less struggle than usual. "I got in a fight."

"What for?"

I shrugged. "I felt like it."

"_Dammit, Lovino_! You can't just go around doing stupid things because you feel like it!"

"Kick bricks, it's not like I _hurt_ the guy."

Ludwig cursed under his breath and stressfully ran a hand through his hair in attempt to slick it back. "_Learn to control yourself_. I don't know what possess Antonio to go looking for such a stubborn boy."

"It's just the pretty face." I joked. The man did not appreciate my humor. I felt rather guilty about being so lighthearted while my legal dimidium was so distraught. I tried to understand and summoned a sympathetic smile. He took one look at it and snorted.

"_Dammit_. You know you're only making more problems for yourself, don't you? They're already "inviting" people to leave the city, they'll do it to you too. Stop making so much trouble. Lie low, keep yourself out of trouble. Is that too much to ask?"

"_Inviting _people to leave? Since when?"

"Since this morning." Gilbert butted in. "Two scientists are gone. Next will be the rebels _then the sick _then who knows? The old?" His voice tensed when naming his own kind.

"I told you, _you're fine_." Ludwig insisted. "No one's making you go anywhere so will you quit talking like that!?"

"_Oh please!_ Take a note from the history books, Hitler got rid of the weak ones just as fast as he got rid of the Jews."

"This is not the Holocaust."

"I wish there weren't so many similarities. I wish the holocaust weren't relevant at all but _fuck that_!"

"Quit it! You don't know what you're talking about!"

"Oh, Don't I!? I can't walk for shit, my skin doesn't create pigment, my lungs work better as chewing gum than they do lungs and my hair falls out when I sneeze but, of _all_ the simple things my body can't do for shit, thinking isn't one of them. I know how this works. In a place like this of genetic perfection, why would you keep the sick kid around?"

"_Gilbert_!" Ludwig grabbed his brother's arm with a brutal amount of strength. How that arm didn't snap, I'll never know. "You are alive, deal with it!" He mumbled under his breath with ferocity as if I couldn't hear. "Learn to keep that mouth of your shut, your words are watched just as much as your actions. There is no Hitler, no Nazis, no war, and _no extermination_. Do you understand?"

The smaller tugged his arm away and began to walk back, his hand raised in a haunting salute. "_HEIL ZE FUHRER_!" He screamed as loud as his scratchy voice could manage.

"_Stop that!"_ Ludwig and I barked.

He marched up to the library doors, turned stiffly to face us and held his arm out. "INCOMPREHENSIBILIS _POTENTIA!" _Then entered the library accompanied by the slamming of doors.

"_Fuck_." Ludwig grumbled and pressed his palms into his eye sockets. "Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, _fuck_! Will everyone just _calm down_!"

"Cool it, Big Guy." I pulled his hands away from his eyes before he could blind himself. "We'll go for a walk or something. Take a chill pill."

He smacked my arm off him. "Just finish your bandaging." And with that, he trudged off. He was a sad man. He must have been happy at some point, maybe when my brother was alive, but death definitely takes a toll on you. So, I finished my bandaging and went to convince Ludwig to go with me to the pool.

It had begun to rain while we walked. I complained that-

In the middle of my thought, a huge hand took hold of my arm and yanked me up out of the water. "Are you trying to drown yourself!? What is this!?" The blonde demanded. He was not in a good mood; his patience level was reaching well around none.

"I was holding my breath!"

"For seven minutes! I thought you were dead, you idiot!" He lifted me by my arm as if I were a monkey and plopped me on the dry ground.

"_As if_. One kid drowned sixty years back and ever since, they've been making lungs a lot stronger. I could go half an hour if I really trained."

"But _you're not_ trained. Can you just stop doing stupid things for one minute! Sometimes-"

"Sometimes what?"

"Some times you remind me of your brother." He finished in a sigh then quickly shook off the topic. "I can't imagine that Antonio would be very pleased if I returned you to him _dead_."

"Yeah, he's kind of picky about stuff like that."

The man plopped back down into his lounge chair with exhaustion. He patted a spot beside him and motioned to be with his eyes to come over, I obeyed. "Just for ten minutes, sit here and be still. Okay?"

"Fine." Ludwig pulled out his book and began to read. "What are you reading."

"Nothing."

"Come on, what is it?" I tried to peak in but he pulled it away and scowled at me which I returned graciously.

"_Sit still."_ He scolded and returned to reading. I tried. Patience had never really been my thing, lack of it tended to cause a lot of the troubles in my life. After a while, he noticed how I sighed and fidgeted and found games to play with my feet. Surprisingly, he laughed. He must have been thinking about my brother. "Can't you silence yourself for _a minute_?"

I grumbled. "I'm silent when I'm at home, I want to have some fun."

He shoved me with a smile. "Go swim."

I ran into the pool and let myself float in artificial space. For a while, I let him have his silence but even that becomes boring. "Can you read me a bit of what you're reading?" I asked, drifting around on my back.

"No."

"Come on!"

"Alright, alright. Here it is: The Perfect Recipe for Cooking Young Boys. Preheat oven to four hundred degrees, slice young boy into thin pieces, if he's still blabbering after that, hit him with the pan a few times."

"That's not what you're reading!"

"Yes it is!"

"Let me see it then!"

The man laughed just the littlest bit. "Why does it matter?"

"I just want to know the kinds of things you read."

"Poetry."

"Really?"

"What'd you expect?"

"I don't know…instruction manuals? How to fix a molecular motor in ten easy steps."

"I'm not as stiff as you think I am?"

"Oh really? Read me a poem."

"You wouldn't understand poetry."

"Antonio's entire life dialog is made up of the damn stuff, I think I'll manage."

"If you say so." He found a page. "I sit alone in whisper winds, parallel to the sky. I look into the eyes of Nyx and hear their distant cry. From far beyond, in far far stars, the people whom live up there, they sing down their distant tales in poem and song and prayer. I write them down, I hurry quick for fear I might forget…the many tales they've given me that I will tell you yet."

"What's that one called?"

"Messenger."

"By who?"

"Anonymous. Why? Do you feel like it's talking about you?" I looked at him accusingly. Did he know? Did he know about my plans for a week from today? Without my answer, he sighed and ran his fingers over the page lovingly. "Poetry has a way of making you believe that it was written just for you. It brings this sense of false importance and false understanding."

"So you like poetry?" I swam up to the side of the pool to watch.

"_Like_ isn't the word I'd necessarily put to it. I, myself, have been fooled into its imaginary embrace and believing that it understood me and I, myself, am also guilty in taking pleasure in it. It brings hope where there isn't any. If any books are be banned or taken from their shelves, it should be these. I do not_ like_ poetry, I simply _understand_ it."

"Is there one that you understand with special fondness."

"Yes and no. There is one poem, a very short one, that speaks as if it knows me in my deepest person. I'm not fond of it as much as I feel obligated to read it over and over until my brain is numb with words."

"Recite it for me."

He closed the book. "Bloody is the soldier who stands over the bloody puddle. His wounds sink deeper than iron bullets yet his cries are those to the fox who watches on deftly. The fox does not know the man. The fox does not care for the man, but it will listen as he wails…_Who Is_ by Eric ." The way his tongue moved to the words was haunting, the verses dripped with heavy meaning, a meaning that Ludwig knew all too well. The echo of the poem heaved its sloth-like depression along with it, making my stomach feel more like hurling than it had before.

"Haven't you a happier poem?"

"None that belong to me as much as this one."

"Should I write you one?"

"It isn't simple like that."

"Will you allow me to try?"

"Do as you will." He dismissed.

It took me a moment to think it over but as spontaneously as it had come to my mind, it left through my lips. "Happiness, my greatest instigator, my compulsive liar and most coveted pleasure. Happiness, my partner."

"What does that mean? Is it just an arrangement compiled words?"

"That's for you to decide."

He looked up at me. "It's name?"

"It's name? Well…I'll call it…well, _You_ name it."

"Me?" I nodded. "What for? It's _your_ poem."

"_Name it_." I insisted.

"How about Foolish Adolesance?" He joked.

"What that down!" I cried. "Write it down before either of us forgets!"

"What!?"

I made an angered attempt to throw water at him, only managing to land a drop or two on the boys who acted as if he were allergic to it. "Write it down! I want to give the first copy to Antonio!"

"What for!?"

"_For a present_." I sighed. It's so hard to explain things to people who just don't understand. "That's what you do for people if you want to be their favorite." I threw another handful of water at him which flew from my palm like a venomous snake only to crumple to its death half-way along the journey. "Have you got a pen on you?"

"Yes! Stop trying to get me wet!"

"Write it down, quick."

He rummaged around in his bag before finally pulling out a scrap of paper and pen. "You could write it yourself, you know." He pointed out bitterly as he licked the tip of the pen.

"If I wrote to Antonio, I wouldn't stop after a few mere sentences. One thought would lead to another and soon, there would be no more ink left in the world. That would be very inconsiderate of me."

"Fine, fine, Shakespeare. Say it again for me from the beginning." I recited it back and asked him to show me when he was done.

"Do you think he'll like it?"

"I'm sure he will. He's a very happy person but he won't be after he sees what kind of trouble you've gotten yourself into. He'll blame it on me too."

And, like so many times before, Ludwig was right. "What happened to you!?" The Latin boy cried as he slipped through my window that night.

"You shouldn't be here! Things are getting sticky for the naturals. If you got caught, they'd have your head."

"What happened!? Who did this? Where was Ludwig?" He took my hand but I pulled it free, refusing to be coddled like an infant.

"I did it myself. I instigated a fight and… more or less won."

"Where was Ludwig?"

"At his house where he was supposed to be."

"No, he was supposed to be keeping an eye on you."

"_No_, Antonio, he has his own life. Besides, I'm fine, I _wanted_ to fight."

"Why?"

"Because I god damn felt like it, that's why. I don't need people to save me, I don't need to be an object for a glass case and I don't need a body guard. I wanted to fight someone for the simple invigoration of it. Why do people throw rocks? It's the bare minimum of our ape-like nature yet it has always called to man in the same way as hurling fists at one another does. Do you blame me for acting human? And if so, if human nature is the impenetrable sin that we all fall victim to, then why not give in? Why must I fight even the simplest of my desires? What exactly are you asking of me, ?"

I stumped the boy for a little while. He finally groaned and rubbed his palm to his forehead. "Why must you turn my anger into lust? It's you who does it, gives me this unreasonable desire. You take my head and screw with it by using that fire of yours. I can't stand tall against you, Lovino Vargas."

"You're not angry then?"

"I'm very angry yet so in love which only angers me further. I want to scold you but I can't, I want to kiss you but I can't. I can't decipher the traps you set for me."

I took his hand in mine. "There are no traps."

"None that you realize maybe. You see, I love you uncontrollably and yet I'm so conflicted. I can never read you. That Mona Lisa smile could withhold a million different feelings and each time I see it, I'm enthralled with this desire to uncover every one of them. But you're just too damn smart."

"Kiss?" I asked slyly and smiled.

He rolled his eyes and smiled back. "How do I deny you?" He leaned in and kissed my lips softly, then my cheek, then my brow, then my forehead. "How can I be so upset and so impassioned at the same time?"

"Kiss." I whispered again, my eyes still closed lightly.

He complied, meeting his lips to mine. Then another on the nose, jaw, and neck. "How do you enchant me like this?"

"_Kiss_."

My collar bone, my throat, my jaw, my lips. His fingers worked through my hair kindly. "How, little boy, did you do it?"

"I'm a mind controller, I never told you."

"Ah, now, that would make sense." He laughed.

"Would it?"

"The only way to explain this is absolute control. My emotions change with the bat of an eye, my soul moves with the touch of your lips. Witch craft, it must be."

"That was the other secret I kept from you." We both laughed into another kiss that I was forced to part when I warm hand began to snake up my shirt. I pulled it out and returned it to its owner.

"I've touched your skin before." He protested.

"I'll not allow it tonight. I'm in a far too persuadable mood."

"Oh?" He sat down on my bed, a sloppy grin pulling over his face. "And why would that be? What makes you so happy all of the sudden?"

"I don't know. Hormones, I assume. That's what they attribute changes like these to when you're my age."

"I was your age once." He cooed and took my hand back, tracing his fingers up and down the palm.

"Twenty years ago, maybe."

"It was only three years ago! I'm not an old man just yet."

"I can never tell. Sometimes you act like your ancient and sometimes you're a child."

"Which way do you prefer me?"

"_Ageless_, like always. Never to be labeled by time, never to be restrained into one way of thinking."

"My, you _are_ in a good mood~ What happened? Won't you tell me?"

"_Nothing_ happened."

"Nothing happened? Your skin is tainted blue and someone has committed the sin of trimming away your beautiful hair!"

"I got a _hair cut_."

"Why?"

"My mother thought I should. Do you like it?"

"I do." He reached up to brush his fingers along a tuft over my ear. "It's amazing how you can change and yet do nothing to stop me from loving you just the way you are."

I noticed the bag around his waist and quickly diverted my attention to it to keep from getting any redder than I had already was. "What did you bring for me?"

He gasped playfully. "I see what your motives are! You don't want me, you want my presents!"

I sat beside him on the bed and tried to pry into the bag that he was holding close. "I'm hungry! How often do I get to eat? Once or twice a day?"

"I've been doing my best, Lovi, but I'm not the best fisherman the world's even seen."

"You brought me pork once." I reminded him. "And rabbit on a couple occasions."

"Today will be a special treat then." He handed me a smooth, cylindrical lump of…something.

"What is it?"

"It's a sausage. Every month or so, the entire community brings together the scraps of meat that weren't partially useful. Everything that's been slaughtered: ducks, hens, boar, sheep, it's all put together into a sausage!"

"That sounds disgusting."

"It's not! There's some breadcrumbs and seasonings in there too. It's good, _just try it_."

"Is it cooked?"

"Of course! Cooked it myself."

"What's the film stuff?"

"Will you just _eat it_? It's food."

"Fine." I ignored my gut's refusal in favor of my stomach's desire. I hated to admit it, but it was delicious. It was a log of pig slop and still, it was delicious.

"Good?" He asked.

I nodded, keeping my expectant eyes on the bag. The boy noticed this and, with a chuckle, he emptied its contents. A canteen of berry-infused water, a tomato, a piece of slightly stale bread, and a handful of black cherries. I finished the sausage then helped myself to a few cherries. The tomato would be saved until tomorrow on account of how juicy it was. I either had them as a snack in the woods or as breakfast in the shower. Antonio liked to wander around my room while I ate, inspecting papers and straightening things. "What's this?" He called from my desk.

I looked to the object in question, a bookmark with a few jumbled sentences scribbled onto the back. "It's a present for you, I wrote it."

"My sweet!" He cried quietly and read it a few times over. "You wrote this?"

I nodded. "Ludwig scribed it for me. He was worried that you'd be sore with him."

He took my cheek in his hand and kissed my forehead once softly, then again and again and once more that lasted longer than the other three combined. "_Thank you_."

"You like it?"

Another kiss landed on me but this time on my lips. "Very much so." He connected our lips again before beginning to push me flat onto my back. I stopped him just as he towered above me. "What?" He cocked his head in confusion.

"I'll not be tempted." I growled. "Stop making these advances on me, I'll send you away."

He got off me and retreated to lean against my desk. "I don't mean it, My Love, honest! _I_ am the victim of _your_ temptation!"

"So is it sex that you want!? Are those the desires that drive you so mad?"

"No!"

"Do I bore you with my restlessness? Is bedding me the confirmation that you need in order for our relationship to be true?"

"No, that's not it! It's you who drives me mad! With a world of finite and infinite time, of things and stuff and people and space and nothingness there has got to be _someone_ who means _something_ around here! When I'm bombarded with time and the lack of it, love and the lack of it, hope and the lack of it, there as got to be _someone_ that I can turn to and know that I am not lost. So I chose you… Lovino. _You_… are the road when I have none, _you_ are the light when there is darkness, _you_ are the home when my world is utterly and completely disheveled. How do you ask me to keep myself away from you? How do you expect that I can keep my heart away from its matching beat? After all, I have but one Lovino, just one of these beautiful, kind, smart, creatures and I'll not deny myself the honor of giving him my love."

My heart stopped beating. Beautiful green orbs, filled with passion, met mine and captivated them entirely. _Antonio_… the curly-headed boy, the spirited boy who spoke in such poetry, who smiled so kindly, who nurtured the very essence of what I means to be _alive_ in his hands. _Antonio_ who loved deeper than the gods, who was wiser than the old, who was more pure than a lamb. _He_ looked to me with a lust that could not be filled with orgasm or wine but only with a love as true and unadulterated as his own.

I had no option but to fall into him, murmuring endlessly that I loved him until my lips were silenced by his own. Hands groped with a burning need to hold the other, to somehow contain all of their unfathomable qualities. Kisses were rough then apologetic, then sweet and addicting. Our two forms moved without souls to guide them onto the bed where they continued to show love in all the Earthly ways they knew how to. Clothes became unnecessary for each of us was curious to see how the other looked without them, skin was greeted by skin, warmth by warmth, and love by love. "Leave those." Antonio murmured as I touched the linen of his boxers. "Leave them for tonight; we'll go no farther than this."

"Okay." I whispered.

"Does that disappoint you?" He asked with honest intentions.

"No."

"Okay." Thin kisses powdered over my hair delicately. I caught a breath embedded with the sent of coffee beans and aged trees, the scent I had come to know as Antonio's. "That sort of thing is a thing for a patient night, a night where I don't fear of exposing us, a night that is ours to have."

"It'll be my first time." I mentioned quietly.

He laughed softly under his breath. "Mine too. That's why we must have our own night for it. A night where we're not constantly distracted by paranoia and we don't have to worry that we're too loud or too confused. It has to be a night where we can relax and let it happen the way nature intended it to."

"Nature never intended for boys to lie beside each other as lovers."

"The truth is, nature is _without_ intention. It never intended for life to occur, for mass to form and spin around in a solar system. Nature has no right to tell me what is or isn't natural, it only knows "stuff", little bits of nothing that have come together to be _something_. Nature is simply a creator, it does not have biases, it turns a lot of nothings into a something. It never said that a man can not love a man, it was never written in the stars, it was never scribed against the moon. Nature gave us existence and _we_ did the rest."

"How do you come up with these things?"

"I do a lot of thinking. I also have an unfair advantage. I've seen life through the eyes of so many people, I've had help. After all, it takes death to understand life and pain to understand happiness."

"Tell me a memory. Don't tell me one about war or sickness, tell me your favorite one."

"My favorite? Well, there was this one that came upon me quite suddenly but it's my favorite for sure."

"Tell it to me." I closed my eyes and snuggled into him. His arms greeted the act by closing in around me.

"It was about this young boy who was fighting-"

"I told you not to tell me a war memory!"

"Relax. He fought not with a rifle but with his words. You see, he was a little prince and he refused to be cared about. He would yell and kick and punch instead of showing anyone his weakness, he was a lonely little prince. One night, he was accompanied by his knight and he had been hurt that day. He fought every time the knight would try to get him to show his true feeling but when the knight finally succeeded, a beautiful thing happened. The knight's love was returned!"

"You bastard! This is our first night together!"

He laughed. "It sounds so much like a fairytale!"

"The worst fairytale ever!"

"Stop denying my affection!" He cried playfully and held me tight as I fought against him.

"Leave me alone, you weirdo!"

"Shh! Sleep, sleep! It's getting late!"

So I ceased repelling the boy and instead nested my head against his beating chest. "Toni?" I whispered.

"What?" He whispered in return.

"Do you thing Ludwig minds that I'm cheating on him?" A small laugh came from either of us.

"I don't think so." He reassured me and I answered him with a small "Yeah".

"Antonio…?"

"Mm-hm?"

"I'm going to say something…" I warned.

"I'm listening."

"Antonio… if…if I ever seem like I love any less than one hundred percent… if I ever seem confused or scared about being with you, if I ever seem like I don't _mean it_… then…I'm lying through my teeth."

"Is that your coded way of saying you love me?"

I took a deep breath. "_Yeah…_"

"_I love you too_." I had decided that those four words _were _and always _would_ be the most complicated words of all time. They could be the words that a lonely soul is desperate to hear, the words used to take advantage of another, or the words used to bring complete and utter happiness upon two lives. In that moment as I fell into unconsciousness, I experienced the latter.

I dreamed that night. I was myself in the world that I knew but with the presence of a large concrete wall that separated forest from city. When I went to investigate said wall, I was approached by a politia officer who warned me not to touch it. "What happened to the naturals?" I asked him.

"The who's?"

"The _naturals_, the people on the other side of the wall."

"There are no people on the other side of the wall."

"What? What about the reservation?"

"What reservation?"

"The one behind the wall!"

"There's nothing behind the wall."

"What!? Of course there is!"

"I think you're mistaken. You should go home, what's your parent's number?"

"Actually, can you call my dimidium's house instead? My parents will be at work." I wanted to talk to Ludwig, he would know what to do, he wouldn't by into this bull shit.

"Name?" The officer pulled out his booklet and flipped through its pages.

"Beilschmidt. That's B-E-I-"

He shut his book before I could finish. "There's no one by that name."

"Yes there is, there's a whole family! Seven children, a mother and a father."

"They don't exist."

"_Yes_ they do! _Harzetta_ Beilschmidt, _Arno_ Beilschmidt, _Rita, Susanne, Johanna, Gilbert, Ludwig!"_

"Those people don't exist." He answered flatly.

"_Yes they do_!"

"You're not feeling well, you should go home."

"Call Rosalind! She'll tell you about them!"

"There's nobody by that name."

"What the hell is going on here!?"

The officer began mumbling into a walky-talky. "Young male…ID: 16040…Yup…Alright." He put the device in his pocket and retrieved another in its place. A hand gun. "Up against the wall." He ordered. In fear, my body responded by raising its arms and backing up to the cold concrete.

"What's happening!?" I demanded.

"Just a random search, happens everyday, no need to be afraid." He said as he raised the gun to my head.

"Don't shoot me! Please! ANTONIO! _ANTONIO!_"

"Relax." He instructed but I continued to scream for my love who would not respond. "There's no need to worry, just protocol."

Before he could fire the bullet that would take my life, my eyes opened and I realized the sensation of pain coming from the hands that were roughly grabbing my shoulders. The one I called for had arrived and he looked down at me with terrible concern. "Lovi? Are you awake?"

I nodded and realized the wetness on my lashes. I wiped at it only to find it replenishing instantly. I was once again embraced tightly. He continued to chant that I was okay and that it was a dream. It took me a while to figure out what that meant. Then I remembered. I had dreamt about the wall and the politia… _I was afraid_. As soon as this conclusion hit me, I pulled my arms around him as well.

He wanted me to tell him about it so I relayed what I remembered which wasn't much. "You were saying my name." He told me. _Shit_. "But not very loudly, I don't think your parents heard."

"Probably not, that would have been bad."

"Good thing I'm here then."

"Yeah, I guess so."

He held me and played with my hair until we were back asleep and this time, slept until morning. Before he made his escape, Antonio gave me the list that I had asked for from Marxi. It told me exactly what I was looking for, where I would find it, and what I would do with it once I found it. We pecked lips and soon after, I found myself alone in my room with only the boy's scent and a memory of his touch to comfort me.

Neither mother nor father were home and there was a note on the dining room table that excused the woman to her friend's house to play cards. I would do it now, it was the perfect time. I ran up to my room, retrieved the list and read over the first step.

**Wait until you are alone and the room is secure, bring pencil and paper. Enter the room and find the computer screen that reads: Logs. Refrain from reading any of the information on any of the screens, do not become distracted.**

So I did as instructed. This time, I knew where to find the light switch so I gingerly flicked it on, feeling the sin run up and down my fingers. I ignored it. _It had to be done._ The computer was the center of the three screens, blue text blinking LOGS, just as Marxi had predicted.

**Say aloud, "Log, active information" and try to deepen your voice to sound similar to your father's so that the machine will listen. When it asks you to confirm your authorization, say "Bypass Vargas 16041". A new screen will appear.**

The machine reacted as expected. The new screen read only numbers and letters, undecipherable to anyone without gears for a brain.

**Say, "Access Entrance code." Copy the results with perfect accuracy. Write legibly, record all digits, record capitalization and symbols if apply. Once you have it copied, check its accuracy five times, announce "Retreat to log",exit the room and make a second copy in pen as to prevent tampering. Burn the original, hide the final. Wait until further instruction. **

**On behalf of all of us, thank you. Because of your efforts, we may be able to end this evil. Burn this note once task is complete.**

I opened my mouth and read off, "Access Entrance code" in my father's voice. I was expecting a paragraph of jumbled text but was greeted with something completely unexpected. The code was a mere seven digits, all English, one capitalization. My eyes searched it right-to-left, left-to-right, up, down, trying to grasp the magnitude of what I was seeing.

_Lovino_

I read it over and over until the letters burned themselves into my brain and _still_, it was there, unchanging. What did that mean? _"These tests don't involve you, they're all __**because**__ of you."_ I could remember when my father had said that to me, his perfect smile on his perfect face. What did that mean!? Who was I!? What part did I have in this!?

I shakily scratched down my own name onto the paper. _My own name_. L-O-V-I-N-O, no doubt about it, no way to deny it. Regardless of its sure existence, I couldn't wrap my mind around it. I followed through with the note, telling it to retreat to log, turning off the light, closing the door, and copying it over again in pen. I burned the note along with the pencil copy and tucked the final copy into my pant pocket where I could feel it burn like a live flame. I sat my numb body out on the front lawn because of the humidity inside caused by the walls. Not only did they know what I had done but they must have also known of my father's crimes. They knew why my name was the entrance code, they knew why my mother cried and why the town always smelled of rotting flesh. I would be god damn happy when they burned.

Father was the first to return home. He had been home a lot more recently, perhaps he knew of the appending danger, maybe he just wanted to keep an eye on his troubled youth. He called out to me as he approached, using Feliciano's name instead of my own. "What're you doing out here? Carbon monoxide leak in there?"

"I just wanted the fresh air." I lied. "Hey, Dad?"

"Yes?" He reached for the door and it clicked itself unlocked after reading his chip. I got up and followed him in.

"Dad, I wanted to know about your work."

My father was a man bred for his cool demeanor. He easily closed the door and looked down at me. "Be careful about what you ask, I won't spare you the truth because of your age so only ask what you're prepared to know."

"What you said earlier… about how it was all _because_ of me…"

"I remember." He sat his brief case down on the table.

"_What's_ because of me?"

The man ran a hand over his stubble in contemplation. "Well, to answer that, you must first know what, when your brother was alive, I worked simple lab jobs. I fertilized eggs, grew and recorded the progress of the embryos. We lost Feli and like so many others, we turned to cloning to bring him back and that was when I realized first hand the inaccuracies of cloning. I realized that my new son was not my old one which I always _knew_ but never _understood_ until then. So, I became much more passionate about my work. I started a revolution, I found a way to perfect cloning, to truly bring back a lost one."

I had no idea why but all of the sudden, the man had a hand on my shoulder affectionately. "I did it _for you_, to make it possible for you to be who you were supposed to be. Soon, I'll have it ready. It was going to be a surprise. _I found a way to fix you_."

"Fix me?"

He nodded. "It would be a simple procedure, only taking a matter of minutes and afterwards, you would understand Feliciano. You would see the things he saw, feel the things he felt, it would be _perfect_. Of course, we would risk temporarily or permanently erasing some of your current memories but nothing as important as your motor skills. That's the risk you take in order to excel, isn't that right, son?"

I nodded, unsure of what else to do. "When…w-when were you planning to do the procedure?"

"I'd give it a year of two before the technology is right" I hoped my sigh of relief wasn't audible. "Aren't you proud of me? I'm an innovator! I've made it possible to reverse death, to resurrect the forgotten! Do you understand the kind of possibilities this opens now?"

I nodded again. "I…I need to take a walk." I excused, feeling the sickness rising in my stomach.

"Son." He held my shoulder more firmly. "This is a surprise that should stay between us, alright?" I nodded. My face became hot, my hands clammy, my throat swollen. I was going to hurl! I had to leave. I turned to the door only to be stopped again. "And son? The bruises, where did you get them?"

"Fell." I excused and rushed out, holding my stomach long enough to get to the flower bed in the back. Vomiting, of all bodily functions I am capable of, is the least pleasurable. I understood directly after why naturals are so adamant about keeping their food internal after being eaten. Never the less, I kicked loose dirt on top of it and did my best to make it look like part of the landscape.

And that is how I began my day. Cleaning up the food I barely had time to digest, thinking about my father and his work and plotting to destroy it all using only my name. What would happen if my father was allowed to continue with his research? What did his selfish little experiments mean for man kind? Who would be the next victim, how many would there be? How many deaths already? How many to come? When have we gone too far? Could our progress really be stopped? Could anything be done to save the senseless, selfish, corrupt yet beautiful and good-willed species we know as humans? I held the note tight in my fist, the note that contained just seven letters, the letters I would use to flip the tables.


End file.
